Cagliostro and company; a sequel to the story of the diamond necklace;

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CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

The Diamond Necklace : being the true story of Marie
Antoinette and the Cardinal de Rohan. Authorised
translation by H. Sutherland Edwards. With
Twelve Illustrations. 1901. Crown 8vo, 6^.
London : John Macqueen.

Princes and Poisoners : studies of the Court of Louis
XIV. Translated by George Maidment. With
Two Illustrations. Second edition. 1901. Pott
4to, 6s. London : Duckworth and Co,

Legends of the Bastille : the true story of the Man in
the Iron Mask. Translated by George Maidment.
With Eight Illustrations. 1899. Crown 8vo, 6s.
London : Downey and Co.

Of THE

UNIVERSITY

OF

MARIE ANTOINETTE.

Frontispiece.

CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

A .SEQUEL TO THE
STORY OF THE DIAMOND NECKLACE

BY

FRANTZ FUNCK-BRENTANO

TRANSLATED BY

GEORGE MAIDMENT

fVITH TEN ILLUSTRATIONS

JBC

Of THC

UNIVERSITY

OF

NEW YORK

JAMES POTT AND CO.

1902

SFUHO

PREFACE

Meditating at St. Helena on the events of
the Revolution, Napoleon let his thoughts
dwell on the Diamond Necklace affair.
* Perhaps/ he said, *the death of the queen
dates from that/ Mirabeau and Goethe
thought the same, and it is also the con-
clusion of the best informed of modern
historians like M. Pierre de Nolhac. Their j
opinion has been quoted in a former book,
Tke Diamond Necklace, devoted to the
origin and the development of the famous
case. In the following pages the reader
will find an account of the ulterior destinies
of the chief persons involved in the mys-
tery; and he will see by what a chain of

214870

vi PREFACE

circumstances Marie Antoinette was drawn
to the scaffold.

The unpublished documents of which
use has been made are very numerous.
On the majority of points facts hitherto
unknown will be met with. We venture to
mention this only that we may express our
indebtedness for a great part of this new
information to the erudition of M. Alfred
Begis, Treasurer and Keeper of the
Records of the Society of Contemporary
History, and Secretary of the Society of
Booklovers.

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGB

INTRODUCTORY, I

I. CAGLIOSTRO TO THE FRENCH PEOPLE, . . 5
II. CAGLIOSTRO AGAINST THE GOVERNOR OF THE

BASTILLE, 14

ril. THE ABSOLUTE MONARCHY, 22

IV. GIUSEPPE BALSAMO, 3I

V. A VISIT OF GOETHE TO PALERMO, ... 53

VI. TOUSSAINT DE BEAUSIRE, 68

VII. THE COUNTESS DE LA MOTTE AT THE SALPiiTRIERE, 93

VIII. THE ESCAPE, I06

IX. MADAME DE LA MOTTE WRITES THE STORY OF

HER LIFE, IIS'

X. THE PAMPHLETS, I44

XI. REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENTS, . . . . 151

XII. THE END OF JEANNE DE VALOIS, . . . 165

XIII. THE HALL OF VENUS I74

XIV. THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN, .... 184

XV. THE CARDINAL DE ROHAN IN HIS DIOCESE, . 23O

XVI. LAMOTTE-COLLIER, 24O

XVII. LEGENDS, 279

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE
PORTRAIT OF MARIE ANTOINETTE, BY KUCHARSKI, Frontispiece

PORTRAIT OF MADAME DE CAGLIOSTRO, . . facing 34

PORTRAIT OF NICOLE LEGUAY, OTHERWISE THE

BARONNE D'OLIVA, BY PUJOS, ....,, 76
THE KEY OF THE SALPETRIERE PRISON, . . . I08

THE FLIGHT FROM THE SALPETRIERE, . . . facing I08

MADAME DE LA MOTTE IN PEASANT COSTUME, . ,, 112
THE * GRANDE VISITE DE MME DE LA MOTTE AU

PERE DUCHESNE MALADE,' . .,,146

PORTRAIT OF THE PRINCESSE DE LAMBALLE, . ,, I96

MARIE ANTOINETTE IN MOURNING GARB, . . ,, 202

THE QUEEN GOING TO EXECUTION, BY LOUIS DAVID, ,, 226

OF THE

UNJVERSITY

Of

CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

INTRODUCTORY

The curtain had fallen on the great Neck-
lace act, which had been agitating all Paris
for months. The famous Diamond Neck-
lace had been obtained from the court
jewellers by the Cardinal de Rohan through
the agency of the woman calling herself
the Countess de La Motte, on the representa-
tion that the Queen of France, Marie
Antoinette, had ordered it, and would pay
for it in instalments. The instalments
when due were not paid, and the jewellers,
after showing themselves curiously lax men
of business, had made inquiries which had
resulted in the pricking of the gigantic
bubble. The queen had never had the

A

2 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

Necklace, which the countess and her
husband had broken up and sold piecemeal.
The question was, how far the Cardinal de
Rohan was a dupe, how far he was an
accomplice. He declared that the countess
had shown him letters bearing the queen's
signature, authorising every step he had
taken, and that he believed the Necklace
had been ordered by the queen. He de-
clared also that the countess had contrived
a meeting between himself and the queen
one night in the grove of Venus at Ver-
sailles. As a result of the exposure the
cardinal was arrested, along with the Count
and Countess de La Motte, the girl who
called herself the Baroness d'Oliva, and
who was said to have personated the queen,
and the so-called Count Cagliostro, who
had been a sort of familiar spirit to the
cardinal. After the complicated process of
law, in which interrogatory and confronta-
tion succeeded confrontation and interro-

INTRODUCTION 3

gatory, and the various accused persons
told their several stories, the Parlement
had at last delivered its verdict. The
signature of the queen was declared a
forgery. Cagliostro and the cardinal were
acquitted of all complicity in the crime ; the
Baroness d'Oliva was acquitted, with a mild
censure for having allowed herself to be the
tool of designing villains ; and the Count de
La Motte was sentenced to the galleys for life.
The protagonist, the petite, vivacious, extra-
ordinarily clever Madame de La Motte, was
condemned to be whipped, naked, by the
public executioner, branded on the shoulders
with the letter V [voleuse, robber), confined
at the Salpetriere gaol for the rest of
her life, and deprived of all her pro-
perty. The sentences on the La Mottes
were severe enough ; the absolute acquittal
of the cardinal was a great blow to the
royal house. The king, Louis xvi., who
had acted throughout with astonishing want

4 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

of foresight and lack of judgment, sent the
cardinal to his Benedictine Abbey of La
Chaise- Dieu, and exiled Cagliostro, who
departed with his wife for England. La
Motte escaped ; his wife suffered her igno-
minious branding and was incarcerated in
the Conciergerie.

It is with the further fortunes of these
actors, and some of their associates, and
with the circumstances leading up to the
death of the queen, that the following pages
have to do.

G. M.

CAGLIOSTRO TO FRENCH PEOPLE 5

CAGLIOSTRO TO THE FRENCH PEOPLE

Cagliostro had no sooner left the Bastille
than, seeing the unanimous movement
of sympathy evoked by Nicole d'Oliva,
and always keenly alive to the trend of
public opinion, he hastened to send the
young woman seven hundred crowns. This
soon found its way into the Gazettes, with
commentaries : * This is how the extra-
ordinary man avenges himself for calumni-
ous reports. He is accused of charlatanism,
and he passes his life in relieving the un-
fortunate ! ' In the little lodging he occu-
pied for a short time at Passy, he received
* all Paris ' before he left — writers, parlia-
mentarians, Duval d'Epremesnil ; and when

6 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

people thought they ought to make a
reference to his misfortunes, he displayed
immense wealth, saying : * I don't need
anybody's assistance; don't pity me.'

On June 13, he made his preparations
for departure, in obedience to the lettre
de cachet exiling him from France. After
having gone to find his wife, who had re-
tired to Saint- Denis, he arrived at Boulogne
on the 1 6th, and embarked for England.
'The shores I left,' he said, *were lined
with a crowd of citizens of all conditions,
who blessed me, and thanked me for the
good I had done their brethren. They plied
me with the most touching farewells. The
winds were already wafting me far from
them ; I no longer heard them, but I saw
them still, their hands raised towards heaven,
and I blessed them in my turn, and cried
out again and again as though they could
hear me: ''Farewell, Frenchmen! farewell,
my children ; my country, farewell ! " '

CAGLIOSTRO TO FRENCH PEOPLE 7

On arriving in London, Cagliostro issued
his celebrated ' Letter to the French People/
It is dated June 26, 1786.

' I have been hunted from France,' ex-
claims the prophet ; * the king has been
deceived. Kings are to be pitied for having
such ministers. I mean to speak of the
Baron de Breteuil. What have I done to
this man ? Of what does he accuse me ?
Of being loved by the cardinal, and of
not deserting him ; of seeking the truth,
telling the truth, defending the truth ; of
assisting suffering humanity, by my alms,
my remedies, my counsels. Those are my
crimes ! He cannot bear that a man in
irons, a stranger under the bolts of the
Bastille, in his power — his, the worthy
minister of his horrible prison — should
have raised his voice as I have done, to
make him known, — him, and his principles,
his agents, his creatures !

*Well then, resolve me of a doubt.

8 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

The king has banished me from his king-
dom, but he has not heard me. Is it thus
ythat all lettres de cachet are put in force in
France? If so it is, I pity you, and the
more because this Baron de Breteuil will
^ have this dangerous department. What !
your persons and property are at the mercy
of this man ? By himself alone he can
deceive the king with impunity ; acting on
slanderous and never contradicted informa-
tion he can issue and have put into execu-
tion, by men like himself, rigorous orders
which plunge the innocent man' into a cell,
and deliver his house over to plunder !

* Are all state prisons like the Bastille ?
No one can have any idea of the horrors
of that place; cynical impudence, odious
falsehood, sham pity, bitter irony, relent-
less cruelty, injustice and death are seated
there. A barbarous silence is the least of
the crimes there committed. For six months
I was within fifteen feet of my wife with-

CAGLIOSTRO TO FRENCH PEOPLE 9

out knowing it. Others have been buried
there for thirty years, are reputed dead, are
unhappy in not being dead, having, like
Mihon s damned souls, only so much light in
their abyss as to perceive the impenetrable
darkness that enwraps them. I said it in
captivity, and I repeat it a free man : there
is no crime but is amply expiated by six
months in the Bastille. Some one asked
me whether I should return to France
supposing the prohibitions laid on me were
removed.^ Assuredly, I replied, provided
the Bastille became a public promenade !

' You have all that is needed for happi-
ness, Frenchmen : a fertile soil, a mild
climate, kindly hearts, charming gaiety,
genius, graces all your own ; unequalled in
the art of pleasing, unsurpassed in the other
arts — all you want, my good friends, is one
little thing : to be sure of lying in your own
beds when you are irreproachable.

*To labour for this happy revolution is a

10 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

task worthy of your parlements. It is

only difficult to feeble souls.

^ *Yes, I declare to you, there will reign

over you a prince who will achieve glory in

the abolition of lettres de cachet, and the

convocation of your States-General. He

V will feel that the abuse of power is in the

long-run destructive of power itself. He

will not be satisfied with being the first of

his ministers ; he will aim at being the first

of Frenchmen.'
L

These lines, dated 1786, are really aston-
ishing. People speak sometimes of the
predictions of Voltaire and Rousseau. ' We
are approaching a condition of crisis and the
age of revolutions,' wrote Rousseau. ' All
that I see is sowing the seeds of a revolution
which will inevitably come,' wrote Voltaire.
Stray utterances culled from a mass of
writings filling fifty and sixty volumes. All
those who, setting up to teach mankind.

CAGLIOSTRO TO FRENCH PEOPLE ii

find that mankind will not be led by their
wishes, speak thus. Voltaire and Rousseau
were men of letters who wrote admirably
and expounded very interesting theories ;
but what a vivid, concrete, precise intellect
Cagliostro must have had, along with an
intuitive perception of realities, to say to
the French in 1786: 'Within a little, your
States-General will be convoked, your
Bastille will become a public promenade,
and your lettres de cachet will be abolished/

And we may imagine the hubbub made in
the streets of Paris by hawkers selling * the
Letter to the French People,' running along
with perspiring faces, repeating their cry,
* Here s something new ! ' in the gardens
and the caf^s. The public rushed to meet
them. Their ' papers ' were snatched from
their hands.

Breteuil at once suffered in reputation.
In vain he showed himself, in his ministerial
office, to be one of the most generous

12 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

spirits France has ever known, a noble
and liberal-minded reformer ; in vain had
» he, by his memorable circular of 1784,
which had marvellous results all through
France, virtually put an end to the regime
of lettres de cachet ; in vain had he decided
on the demolition of the Bastille, and from
that time transformed it into a prison for
ordinary criminals, closed the castle of
Vincennes and the horrible tower of Caen,
opened the gates of Bicetre to Latude,
liberated at one stroke three-fourths of
the prisoners incarcerated in the houses of
correction ; in vain had he, by a general
order of October 31, 1785, set free all
those who were detained in virtue of a
family lettre de cachet — and it is well
known that imprisonments of this kind
were very numerous ; in vain had he for-
bidden the local magistrates to authorise
any incarceration whatever save after a
regular trial ; in vain did he draw up on

CAGLIOSTRO TO FRENCH PEOPLE 13

October 6, 1787, his instructions on the
treatment of madmen in the hospitals, and
attempted to reaHse, with unequalled activity
and energy, the new ideas of progress and
liberty : Cagliostro dealt him a blow in
public opinion from which he never re-
covered. And thus later, when the hour
of revolution struck, the pamphleteers and
orators of the public gardens had no
difficulty in persuading the people that
Breteuil wanted to cut their throats. And
the spread of the news that he had re-
turned to power was the signal for the .
insurrection.

14 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

II

CAGLIOSTRO AGAINST THE GOVERNOR
OF THE BASTILLE

Meanwhile Cagliostro had begun his
famous action against the Marquis de
Launey, Governor of the Bastille, and
against the younger Chesnon, the Com-
missary of the , f hatelet who had been
ordered to search his house when he had
been taken prisoner. On May 29, when
Cagliostro had not yet been tried and was
still in duress, Maitre Thilorier had issued a
petition, *as well written,' observes Hardy
the bookseller, *as the memorial previously
so much acclaimed by the people,' and con-
taining the ' striking demonstration ' of the
following facts : (i) * By the fault of Com-

LITIGATION 15

missary Chesnon when making a search in
the house of CagHostro, then forcing open
the desks, opening all the cupboards and
wardrobes, tearing and upsetting the goods
of the count and his wife — hats, feathers,
dresses, linen — throwing them about in
promiscuous heaps, then neglecting to put
everything under seal before leaving, more
than 100,000 livres worth of goods had
been ruined or left to be plundered :
(2) the Marquis de Launey, Governor of
the Bastille, had kept in his own possession,
refusing to deliver them up to the plaintiff
or his wife, diamonds and jewels of very
considerable value.'

CagHostro gives details. The underlings
of the commissary seized on whatever took
their fancy. * The police-officer had the
audacity to take possession, in the presence
of the plaintiff, of balms, drjugs, elixirs, to
Mhe value of two hundred louis, without
any opposition from the commissary. From

i6 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

my desk disappeared : ( i ) fifteen rolls of fifty
pistoles each, sealed with my seal ; (2) 1233
Venetian and Roman sequins ; (3) a roll
of twenty - four Spanish double pistoles
sealed with my seal ; (4) forty-seven bank-
notes of 1000 livres each. In addition,
there were papers of the greatest im-
portance in my green portfolio. They are
lost, and the resulting damage to me is
more than 50,000 livres.'

Not satisfied with these depredations, the
commissary had executed his orders in the
most vexatious manner, jostling and roughly
handling the Count de Cagliostro and his
wife in the street, to the scandal of the
passers-by. On this ground an indemnity of
50,000 livres was claimed. The total amount
due by the government of the king or his
agents was 200,000 livres, half of which
Cagliostro waived, with characteristic great-
ness of soul, for the purchase of bread for
the poor prisoners at the Chatelet.

LITIGATION 17

His claim was presented on May 29,
before the Diamond Necklace case was con-
cluded. On June 21, Cagliostro, through
his lawyers in Paris, sent from London to
the Marquis de Launey and Chesnon a
writ to appear at the Chatelet.

Cagliostro's statement of claim ends with
the following words : ' Doubtless I shall
not be required to establish these facts by
corroborative evidence. A citizen does not
call two citizens every day to testify to the
state of his cash-box. I should regard
this precaution as not only useless, but
insulting to the nation whose hospitality
I am enjoying. Will it be said that the
facts I assert are improbable? All those
who know me can say whether, since I
have been in France, I have openly spent
less than 100,000 livres a year. Is it
surprising, then, that a man who is not
accustomed to count his money should
have a years income in his possession?

B

i8 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

And I undertake to affirm on oath the
accuracy of the statement I have already
certified. This, without doubt, is all that
justice has a right to demand. No one
will imagine that for the sum of 100,000
livres the Count de Cagliostro will con-
sent to perjure himself in the eyes of all
Europe.'

* Everybody was struck,' says Hardy,
'with the clearness, precision, and energy
of the count's plea. The document in
which the suppliant's rights seemed as well
established as ingeniously argued, met with
the same reception from the public as former
documents.'

A second statement followed. * It pre-
sents the facts,' says Hardy, *in a manner
exactly calculated to stir men's minds and
to interest citizens of all conditions.' Let
us quote the peroration : —

* Frenchmen, a nation truly generous,
truly hospitable, I shall never forget either

LITIGATION 19

the touching interest you have taken in
my fate, or the gentle tears your trans-
ports have made me shed. Calumny and
persecution have dogged my steps. All
the torture that human heart could suffer,
mine had already experienced. A single
day of glory and happiness has recompensed
me for all my long sufferings.' (Cagliostro
is alluding to his triumph after being
acquitted by the Parlement.) * Invited,
desired, regretted everywhere, I had
chosen for my habitation the land wherein
you dwell ; I had done there all the
good that my fortune and talents per-
mitted me to do. Strasburg, Lyons,
Paris, you all bear witness of me to the
universe ! You will say if ever I offended
the least of your inhabitants ! You will
say if religion, good government, and law
were not always sacred to me ; and yet
the voice of my enemies has prevailed.
They have deceived a king ; a letter of

20 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

exile, and indefinite exile, is my reward.
I am driven from France ! Dwellers in
that happy country, people of amiable
manners and tender hearts, receive the
adieux of an unfortunate man worthy per-
haps of your esteem and your regrets.

* He has gone, but his heart remains
with you. Whatever region he inhabits,
believe that he will constantly show him-
self the friend of the French name ; happy,
if the woes he experienced in your country
fall on himself alone ! '

* The public,' says Hardy, * devoured
the Count de Cagliostro's memorial, which
had been printed in sufficient quantities to
satisfy their avidity.'

Now it happened that at this time

Latude, released from prison, was filling

France with tales of his long martyrdom ;

, and Linguet's pamphlet against the Bastille,

' with that of Mirabeau against arbitrary

LITIGATION 21

orders, were creating a formidable stir.
Nowadays we know what exaggerations
and lies these writings contained ; but the
populace in their unhappy state of dread
eagerly swallowed them. The Marquis de
Launey was governor of the Bastille, and
the Commissary Chesnon was the officer
responsible for carrying into effect the
lettres de cachet. ' We remember,' said
Chesnon in his answer to Cagliostro's
accusations, * the terrible effect his memorial
made among the public. It had the same
effect throughout Europe. The retailing of
it brought sedition nearer.' Cagliostro for
his part, in a letter to the English people
issued shortly afterwards, remarked with
pride : * My indictment against Chesnon
and de Launey appeared. It made on all
minds an impression that still endures, and
will always endure whatever may happen,
because the truth is ineffaceable.'

22 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

III

THE ABSOLUTE MONARCHY

The king relegated the matter to the
Council of Despatches, and appointed a
commission consisting of La Michodiere,
Abbe of Radonvilliers, Vidaud de Latour
and Lambert, Councillors of State. The
public raised new protests. Why not the
Chatelet, to which Cagliostro had appealed ?
Why not the regular tribunals? They
were afraid of the light of day, and wanted
closed doors ! Hardy explains this attitude :
' The fact is that de Launey and Chesnon
were absolutely identified with what was
called the administration, an expression so
important that woe betide any one who
had to combat it ! '

THE ABSOLUTE MONARCHY 23

A thousand rumours ran through the
city. Some said that Cagliostro was re-
turning to France to defend his cause, at
the invitation of the king, who had offered
him a safe-conduct. * No,' repUed others :
'the Sieur de Cagliostro has taken the
fixed determination not to trust to the fine
declarations of the French ministry, of
which he has once been the dupe in a
way that he will remember all his life,
however long that may be — and never-
more to return to the bosom of a nation
which he loves, but whose despotic govern-
ment he abhors.' This party affirmed that
the government, to hush the matter up,
had restored the greater part of his goods
and money ; and the former party that
Cagliostro had just withdrawn his petition,
* refusing to continue his case before the
Council of Despatches, which he did not '
regard as a legal tribunal, but merely as a
royal commission.'

24 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

Launey and Chesnon filed dignified
answers, showing the regularity of their pro-
ceedings. The ofificial reports were duly
drawn up, proving that all the customary
formalities had been observed. Madame
de Cagliostro had signed a receipt for all
the effects she had deposited in the Bastille.
Launey added : ' The Sieur de Cagliostro
demands the restoration of a sum of 100,000
livres found in his desk. Justice will pay
the less credence to his statement, when
it sees from the documents deposited in
the Bastille, and written in his own hand-
writing, that he was constantly occupied
in imploring charity and generosity from
his friends ; that he was continually levying
contributions upon them, and that when he
spoke of his desk, nothing was further from
his thoughts than considerable sums and
precious objects.'

Chesnon spoke more strongly. * It is a
sad thing for decency — I will say more, for

THE ABSOLUTE MONARCHY 25

the public security, that calumny is so easily
diffused ; it is a sad thing that a mere
signature, most often borrowed by a writer
who would not dare acknowledge what he
has written, should without difficulty be-
come the passport of a false libel : copies
of it are multiplied in proportion as these
bold pens have spread malice, spite, and
gall ; curiosity snatches at them, cupidity
puts them up for sale, and the documents
which the law only allows to be printed for
the information of the judges have become
for some time past a shameful object of
trade and speculation. The blow falls
unforeseen, and though the wound made
by calumny will be healed, the scar will
remain.'

On July 14, 1787, the Committee of
Councillors of State reported to the Council
of Despatches in favour of the rejection of J
Cagliostro's plea. Thus the governor of the
Bastille and the Chdtelet commissary were

26 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

completely exonerated. The scandal of the
sale of documents during the course of the
Necklace case had, however, been so great,
and the torrent of calumnies and slanders
spread by Madame de La Motte and Cagli-
ostro so atrocious, that Vidaud de Latour,
Director-General of Bookselling, along
with the Keeper of the Seals, Hue de
Miromesnil, determined to put vigorously
in force by a decree of September 17,
^1787, the prohibitions against selling 'any
memoir, pleading, consultation, abstract,
reply, or other documents drawn up in
cases pending before the courts.' This
decision was at once notified to the book-
sellers and printers of Paris, by a circular
from the syndics and aldermen in charge
of the community.

Those who in our time vilify with such
ready eloquence the coercive measures
adopted towards the press under the ancien

THE ABSOLUTE MONARCHY 27

rdgime do not know, or perhaps forget, in
what conditions calumny and slander were
then spread.

In our time the press is its own con-
servator and physician. Suppose some one
were nowadays to put forth against the
Government one of those innumerable
calumnies which in the last year of the
ancien rdgime were daily displayed in news-
letters, gazettes, handbills, and various
brochures and pamphlets ; an official agency
would instantly circulate a correction among
the journals, and next day all France would
know what the Ministry declared to be the
truth. But at the period with which we
are dealing, the press agencies did not
exist. Calumny displayed itself in all
security, without fear of a contradiction,
and certain of finding credence. On the
Bastille and the prisoners, the lettres de
cachet, the control of the finances, the king
and queen, the morals of the court, the

28 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

clergy, the nobility, and soon on the Parle-
ment itself, on the heads of Parisian
industry, on all that represented a tradi-
tion or an authority, a respect or a belief,
the most unlikely and absurd stories were
disseminated ; they found attentive and
hospitable ears, and mouths clever enough
to carry them into the minds of the most
intelligent, and these repeated them in
their turn, strengthening them with their
authority. This was the prelude to the
Revolution.

'Calumny,' Don Bazile-^ was saying at
this very moment, — 'there is no piece of
dull malice, no horror, no absurd tale, but
people get adopted if they take the trouble.
First a gentle rumour, skimming the soil
like a swallow before the storm. Pianissimo
— the poisoned arrow murmurs and whizzes
along, dropping its venom as it flies.
Some mouth or other receives it, and then

^ In Beaumarchais' Marriage of Figaro.

THE ABSOLUTE MONARCHY 29

piano, piano, cleverly drops it into your ear.
The mischief is done; the seed springs up,
the plant grows and spreads insidiously,
and, rinforzando, it plays the very devil
from mouth to mouth ; then, all at once,
goodness knows how, you see calumny
rearing its head, hissing, swelling itself
out, getting bigger as you watch. It darts
on, extends its flight, whirls round, envelops
everything, drags men aft-er it, bursts out
like thunder, and becomes a general outcry,
a public crescendo^ a universal chorus of
hate and proscription. Who in the world
could resist it ? '

A Cagliostro attacked a minister or his
agents : the sale of his precious productions
almost provoked riots. Yet the king had,
in the drawers of the lieutenant-general of
police, all the facts necessary to undeceive
the public. But how could he communicate
them to the people } To-day we have in-__
numerable agencies besides the active pens

30 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

of journalists ; in those days there was
nothing, nothing but the confidence of the
people in the king, their good sense, their
attachment to the crown. A fine thing
to be king !

GIUSEPPE BALSAMO 31

IV

GIUSEPPE BALSAMO

If only Breteuil had been able to bring to
the knowledge of the public the collection
of documents made by commissary Fontaine,
Cagliostro would doubtless not have found
such ardent admirers. Fontaine had dis-
covered — and the documents collected later
on by the Inquisition at Rome confirmed
his researches in all particulars — that the
illustrious prophet, who had once con-
versed with Christ beneath the shade of
the olives, was born at Palermo on June 8,
1 743. H is real name was Giuseppe Balsamo, ^
and he was the son of Pietro Balsamo and
of Felice Braconieri his wife. His father,
of Jewish extraction, was a bankrupt trades-^

32 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

man of Palermo, and died at the age of
forty-five. His widowed mother had lived
with her son Giuseppe and a daughter named
Joanna Maria. In 1758, when fifteen
years old, Giuseppe Balsamo had donned the
costume of the Brothers of the Misericordia,
whose mission it was to attend the sick;
but he had remained only a short time in
their order, picking up with them, however,
the elements of pharmacy.

In Sicily, no less than in France, the
quest of treasure had been all the rage a
century before. Young Balsamo became
a treasure-seeker. He was a clever youth,
and got a rich goldsmith of Palermo, one
Marano, to believe that there lay in a
grotto in the heart of the country an
immense treasure, of which he would make
him the owner. Marano gave him two
hundred ounces of gold. A meeting at
the spot was arranged. It was a fine
moonlight night. Balsamo began his in-

GIUSEPPE BALSAMO 33

cantations. All at once a band of demons,
clothed in deep black, appeared, fell on
Marano, and gave him a sound thrashing.
The good man was cudgelled and robbed.
As ill-luck would have it, Balsamo could not
keep this remarkable stroke of business to
himself; the result was that the goldsmith
learned how he had been tricked, and hired
ruffians to assassinate the young magician,
who in all haste fled to Calabria with two
of his associates, a priest and a servant.
But these two had so well learnt their part
of spirit-rappers that, once in Calabria, they
belaboured Balsamo and took Marano's
money from him. And Balsamo, thus in
his turn robbed and beaten, reached Rome
in 1760 utterly destitute. ® \^>

The wonders of the Eternal City acted "^
as an inspiration. He learnt drawing, and
very soon acquired a surprising facility.
His was a copyist's talent, for he had none
of the gifts of the creative artist. He

c

34 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

copied on old paper, with special inks, the
etchings of Rembrandt, so cleverly that it
was impossible to distinguish the original
from the reproduction. He imitated hand-
writings with amazing success, and attained
a real perfection in the art of forging wills,
which compelled him more than once to
decamp hurriedly from the place he had
. settled in. He made pen-drawings for great
Roman lords, and for Cardinal Orsini, who
honoured him with his protection; but his
fortune remained only moderate. Love
consoled him for his poverty. In Pellegrini
Street, in the workshop of a batadore — that
is, a smelter of copper for carriage orna-
ments — he was touched by the sweet and
tender grace of a girl named Lorenza
Feliciani. Lorenza's eyes seemed like the
transparent shadows of deep water, her
waving tresses had the colour of ripe corn,
and her lips were gleaming red, like cherries
in June.

MADAME DE CAGLIOSTRO.

Of THE

UNIVERSITY

Of

GIUSEPPE BALSAMO 35

She was just entering her fifteenth year.

And there were meetings at the house
of an old NeapoHtan woman hard by the
smelter's workshop. Balsamo was wonder-
fully eloquent, and the child drank in his
words, gazing at him with her big limpid
eyes. The father thought the girl too
young ; but the child declared that she
would marry Balsamo or die. Her father
gave way, and the marriage was celebrated
in April 1769, at the parish church of San
Salvador in Campo.

Balsamo's drawings did not provide a
sufficient income for the young couple. A
Sicilian marquis persuaded him to go to
Germany, promising to obtain for him a
captain s commission in the service of the
King of Prussia, and to employ him in
the meantime as his Italian secretary.
Donna Lorenza, as we know from contem-
porary evidence, was 'one of the beauties
of Europe.' Her complexion was of un-

36 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

surpassable purity, her expression was full
of grace and sweetness. Balsamo and his
wife went, then, to Loretto, thence to Berg
in the state of Venice, where they got into
hot water with the police in regard to some
letters that the Sicilian marquis had forged
in conjunction with Balsamo.

Goethe tells the story of the incident.
The forged documents were intended to
be used in an important lawsuit concerning
the succession to an estate in which the
Sicilian was interested. Balsamo was flung
into prison. Boiling with rage, the marquis
hastened to the president of the court, in
whose anteroom he found the advocate
of the opposite party. He began a dis-
cussion with him, seized him by the throat,
knocked him down, and stamped on him.
The noise brought the president from his
study. He was a weak man, says Goethe,
easily influenced by stronger minds. The
advocate was reduced to a state of terror

GIUSEPPE BALSAMO 37

by the ill-treatment he had received. The
upshot was that Balsamo was set at liberty,
without any formalities, says Goethe, with-
out even any mention being made of his
liberation in the register of the jail. But
it was necessary that he should seek other
climes. After selling their effects, Balsamo
and his wife arrived at Milan almost
destitute, and proceeded to Genoa, whence
they resolved to go and seek their fortune
in Spain.

Casanova met the young couple in 1770,
as they passed through Aix in Provence.
They were dressed as pilgrims. ' They
could not but be people of high birth,' he
says, 'since on arriving at the town they
distributed alms widely. The female pil-
grim was, it was said, charming, and quite
young ; but she was tired out, and went to
bed at once.' ^

Next day, Casanova solicited the honour
of an audience. He was lodging in the

38 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

same inn. *We found the female pilgrim
seated in a chair, looking like a person
exhausted with fatigue, and interesting by
reason of her youth and beauty, singularly
heightened by a touch of melancholy, and
by a crucifix of yellow metal, six inches
long, which she held in her hands. Her
companion, who was arranging shells on his
cloak of black baize, made no movement ;
he appeared to tell us, by the looks he
cast on his wife, that we were to attend to
her alone.'

*We are going on foot,' said Lorenza,
Miving on charity, the better to obtain the
mercy of God, whom I have so often
offended. Though I ask only a sou in
charity, people always give me pieces of
silver and even gold, so that on arriving
at a town we have to distribute to the poor
all that remains to us, in order not to
commit the sin of losing confidence in
Eternal Providence.'

GIUSEPPE BALSAMO 39

* This young woman,' adds Casanova, ' far
from flaunting the airs of libertinage, had all
the outward bearing of virtue. Invited to
write her name on a lottery ticket, she
excused herself, saying that at Rome girls
were not taught to write if they were to
be bred up to virtue and honour. Every
one laughed at this excuse but myself, and
I felt certain then that she belonged to the
lowest classes of the people.'

They came at length to Barcelona, where
Balsamo worked for the viceroy. But after
four months they were obliged to leave the
town * because the viceroy,' says Lorenza,
* had taken a fancy for me, wanted to amuse
himself with me, and when I repulsed him,
conceived much ill-humour against us and
wanted to vex us and to have me arrested,
under the pretext that I was not married.'
They went on to Madrid, where they spent
the year 1771, Balsamo working for the
Duke of Alva. They there made the

40 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

acquaintance of another Sicilian who also
played them tricks, which compelled them
to depart for Lisbon ; but the young woman
being unable to endure the climate of that
city, they betook themselves to London
in 1772.

In London, Balsamo set up as a painter.
He joined a certain Pergolesi, a designer
of Compton Street, but was not long in
falling out with him. He lodged in the
same street as a turner. * He hadn't a
crown of his own,' wrote a French officer
who knew him in those days, 'got drunk
constantly, beat his wife, and had the style
and the manners of a clown.'

At this period Balsamo made the acquaint-
ance of a third Sicilian who went by the
name of the 'Marquis of Vivona.' They
were both received into the austere fellow-
ship of a congregation of quakers. At the
fine eyes of Lorenza, the austerity of one
of these quakers melted away like the

GIUSEPPE BALSAMO 41

morning haze in the sunbeam. It was
agreed between Balsamo and Vivona that
Lorenza should arrange a meeting with
the quaker. He appeared at the appointed
hour, and the conversation grew so warm
that the quaker had stripped off his hat
and wig and coat — when Lorenza gave a
scream, the door flew open, and the out-
raged husband burst in, with Vivona as a
witness : and the quaker had permission to
retire, after signing a note for a hundred
pounds sterling.

With all his hundred pounds, Balsamo
was not long after thrown into prison for
debt. An English lord, whom Lorenza
calls by the extraordinary name of Sir
Dehels, procured his liberation, and took
him and his wife to a country house of his
near Canterbury, where Balsamo was to
decorate the walls with frescoes. The
frescoes were so original, and so amazing,
that Balsamo thought it prudent to decamp,

42 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

and went with his wife to Paris to seek a
fortune. But before taking the road, he
ennobled himself, becoming the Marquis
of Balsamo.

We are now at the close of the year
1772. The journey to Paris has been
related by the fair Lorenza herself. * On
the passage to France,' she says, ' we made
acquaintance with M. Duplessis, the steward
of the Marquis de Prie, who showed us both
all kinds of civilities. And when M. Bal-
samo showed him some of his works, he
appeared surprised. "You will make your
fortune in Paris," he said. ** I am an advo-
cate at the Parlement, and know many
lords ; don't distress yourself, I '11 present
you to the king. You won't have to go
on your travels again. Your wife is very
pleasant, very pretty, very charming. I '11
do all I can to set you up in Paris." '

Arrived at Calais, Lorenza confessed to
M. Duplessis, who was showing her more

GIUSEPPE BALSAMO 43

and more attention, that she would have
to remain at the port, having no money to
continue her journey.

* Whereupon M. Duplessis made me all
sorts of friendly promises, offering to drive
me in his chaise to Paris.

* "And my husband? " I said.

'''Can't he wait a little at Calais? He
will come on later.'"

Lorenza, who knew the ropes, indignantly
rejected this amazing proposition. At last
it was agreed that she should join M.
Duplessis in a postchaise he had hired,
while her husband followed on horseback :
fresh air and exercise could not fail to do
him good.

Delightful journey ! The Marquis of
Balsamo admired nature in her autumn
glory. The woods had put on their dress
of russet brown. The birches and aspens
had foliage of citron yellow, standing out
vividly against the reddish brown of the

44 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

sturdier oaks. On the horizon, where fine
white transparent vapours rose thinly into
the sky, the woods were lost in the autumn
mist. But, snug in the rolling postchaise,
the windows closed — for the air was already
cold, and the young woman had a delicate
throat — the donna Lorenza sat by M.
Duplessis' side ; while Balsamo, now riding
ahead, now behind or level with the
carriage, galloped on in superb joyousness.
He would sing snatches of Italian songs
in his powerful voice, the sonorous notes
swelling far into the echoless distance : and
meanwhile, inside the closed carriage, M.
Duplessis was whispering to Lorenza: 'You
have stolen my heart away. I love you.
You are young and beautiful ; your skin is
sweet and exhales a penetrating fragrance.
My happiness is in your keeping. I make
myself responsible for your fortune. I
will never abandon you. When we are
in Paris, I will get a place for Balsamo.

GIUSEPPE BALSAMO 45

I will assure his happiness also. I will
give him a hundred louis to take a trip
to Rome.'

* Thus tormented against my will,' con-
tinues Lorenza, * I was several times tempted
to stop and leave M. Duplessis, in order to
escape the solicitations and even the actual
violence he showed me in the carriage, as
evidence of his love ; but knowing the
irritable and fiery nature of my husband,
I feared to inform him of what was going
on by refusing to continue the journey, and
we reached Paris in the morning.'

The same day, Duplessis lodged his
travelling companions in the mansion of
the Marquise de Prie, and in the evening,
with the consent of Balsamo, who went to
bed tired out with his journey, he took his
wife to the opera.

* These attentions,' says Lorenza, * lasted
for six weeks or two months, and I cannot
refrain from declaring that the generous

46 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

treatment of M. Duplessis, the tenderness
he showed for me, his amorous expressions,
his promises, made me conceive some kind-
ness for him, all the more because my
husband sometimes vexed me with his ill-
temper and jealousy.'

Duplessis frequently invited the Balsamos
to dinner. One Sunday evening, after des-
sert, Balsamo went off to pay a visit to one
Mercuroz, an apothecary, leaving his wife
and his host tete-a-tete \ 'because,' notes
Lorenza, 'my husband, though jealous, had
confidence in me.'

Balsamo returned on the stroke of mid-
night. He had spent a delightful evening
with his friend the apothecary. The wine
had been wine of Samos, which had put the
apothecary into an excellent temper ; on
this evening, no doubt, Balsamo had been
the happiest of the three.

* From that time,' continues Lorenza,
' M. Duplessis showed me, every time he

GIUSEPPE BALSAMO 47

met me alone, that he was jealous of my
husband. He gave me to understand that
I must separate from him, which wives in
France were at liberty to do.'

The result was that apartments were
taken for Lorenza by M. Duplessis with
a woman named Theron, in the Rue Saint
Honore. But this did not at all suit
Balsamo's book. His confidence in his
wife did not reconcile him to being deprived
of the advantages which his authority as
husband, going at the right moment on a
visit to the apothecary, was capable of
obtaining for him. In January 1773 ^^
laid an information before the lieutenant-"'
general of police, and on February 2 the
pretty Lorenza was ignominiously locked
up at Sainte-Pelagie, along with many
other women, all learning there in what way
ladies in France were free to separate from
their husbands.

In 1775, Balsamo turns up at Naples,

48 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

living in lordly style. His name is now
the Marquis Pellegrino. It was in Pelle-
grini Street, it will be remembered, that
he had met Lorenza six years before.
He had a valet named Laroca, ' who had
made himself famous by his adventures,
and though really a perruquier, had himself
played the marquis at Turin.' The Marquis
Pellegrino taught how to make gold, how
to change hemp into silk, and how to
solidify mercury. From Naples he went
with his wife to Malta, whence he returned
to Naples with the chevalier of Acquino.
^ The year 1776 is the date of his second
journey to London, where Balsamo took
for the first time the name, since become
^ so famous, of the Count de Cagliostro.
This name was not absolutely imaginary.
It was the name of one of his maternal
great-uncles, originally of the little town of
La Noava, eight leagues from Messina,
who had been the factor of the prince of

GIUSEPPE BALSAMO 49

Villafranca. Cagliostro then set up as an
astrologer, and claimed to have succeeded,
with the assistance of the stars, in reducing
to a certainty the chances of winning in
lotteries. He had a lawsuit with a lady of
Chelsea named Fry, who accused him of
purloining a necklace, and got him shut up in
the King's Bench prison. Necklaces were
evidently fated to bring him misfortune.
Cagliostro said that the lady had given
him the jewellery in reward for the accuracy
of his forecasts in lotteries, but the lady
declared that she had intrusted it to him
because he had said that he could turn
the small diamonds into large ones. The
astrologer was ordered to give back the
necklace. After a stay of six months in
London, he took his departure. He left
in his rooms a large portmanteau, filled,
according to his own statement, with costly
possessions. It was empty.

In 1779, Cagliostro made his fantastic

D

50 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

journey to Russia and Poland. The
details of his marvellous performances and
swindling tricks assume such proportions
that it is impossible to credit them.

Early in 1 780 the prophet arrived at Stras-
burg, clothed, as it were, in his mysterious
reputation. He distributed drugs to the
people who crowded into his house. At
Strasburg, where he became acquainted
with the Cardinal de Rohan, he remained
three years and a half In the middle
of 1783, he travelled to Rome, Naples,
Florence, Antibes. On December i, 1783,
he set up as a physician at Bordeaux. His
cures were regarded as miraculous. The
police were obliged to undertake the pro-
tection of his house, to avoid disturbances
among the crowds who thronged to it. On
his consulting days, eight or ten soldiers
v/ mounted guard at the door and on the
staircase. On November i, 1784, he is at
Lyons, busied there more especially with

GIUSEPPE BALSAMO 51

the organisation of masonic lodges. The
mother lodge was founded at Lyons, and
in a few months daughter lodges were
swarming throughout France. On January
30, 1785, Cagliostro arrived in Paris: the
negotiations for the Necklace had com-
menced.

Whence did he draw his resources at
this period ? On the one hand, from his
Egyptian lodges, organised almost every-
where, each of which paid subscriptions
contributing to his subsistence ; on the
other hand, from the Cardinal de Rohan. .

* I remember,' says a manuscript note
signed Rheinbold, written on a copy of
Cagliostro s Letter to the English People,
once in the possession of Xavier Marmier —

* I remember that before the Necklace case,
when the Cardinal de Rohan made his last
journey to Strasburg, he sent him by one
of his people a bag of 1200 to 1800 livres,
and that Cagliostro, to give a gratuity to

52 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

the messenger, borrowed twelve livres from
his host's cook, so destitute was he of
money.' His wealth was thus more ap-
parent than real. He cut a dash by a
prodigious display of diamonds and jewels,
— which were false.

A VISIT OF GOETHE TO PALERMO 53

V

A VISIT OF GOETHE TO PALERMO

As we have seen, Cagliostro, exiled from
France after his acquittal by the Parlement,
embarked for England on June 16.

While our hero was basking for the third
time on the banks of Thames, Goethe, then
travelling in Italy, came upon his family at
Palermo. * A little before the end of my
journey,' notes the great writer under date
April 13, 1787, *an interesting adventure
happened to me. During my stay at
Palermo, I had often heard Cagliostro
talked about at table, and stories told of
him. The Palermites were all agreed on
one point, to wit, that the mysterious
personage was no other than a certain

54 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

Giuseppe Balsamo, who, after more than
one piece of scoundrelism, had been driven
from the town. He was recognised in the
published portraits. I learnt thus that a
jurist of Palermo, at the request of the
French Ministry, had made inquiries into
the origin of this man, who had had the
audacity, in the course of a grave and
momentous trial, to retail the most absurd
fables in the tace of all France — one may
say, of the whole world.

' I asked to be introduced to the man of
law, and was presented to him. He showed
me the genealogical tree, drawn out by him,
of the family to which Cagliostro belonged,
and the notes and documents which had
assisted him to compile a memoir, which he
had just sent to France.' After perusing
these, Goethe expressed the desire to be
presented to Balsamo's mother and sister,
who were living in the town. ' That will
be difficult,' replied the lawyer, 'for they

A VISIT OF GOETHE TO PALERMO 55

are poor people and live a very retired
life ; a visitor would scare them.' But
Goethe insisted, and at last the lawyer
offered the assistance of his secretary, who
knew the family personally. Goethe saw
the secretary, and it was arranged that the
visitor should pass as an Englishman
bringing from London, where Cagliostro
had taken refuge, news of him to his family.
The house inhabited by the Balsamos was
hidden away in the corner of an alley, not
far from the principal street, il Casaro,
Goethe, accompanied by the secretary,
climbed a wretched staircase, which led
straight into the kitchen. A woman of
middle height, apparently very robust,
broad-chested without being stout, was
washing dishes. She was neatly dressed,
and, when she perceived her visitors, raised
the corner of her apron so as to conceal
its dirty side. Her eyes beamed a glad
welcome, and addressing the secretary, she

56 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

said, * Signer Giovanni, do you bring good
news ? Have you succeeded ? ' She
alluded to some trifling business in which
she was interested, and which the secretary
had undertaken to manage for her.

* I haven't yet succeeded,' was the reply,
* but here is a friend of your brother's, who
can tell you how he is just now.'

' You know my brother ? ' she asked,
turning to Goethe.

'All Europe knows him,' replied the
visitor, 'and no doubt you will be pleased
to hear that he is for the present in perfect
safety, and his health is excellent.'

'Come in,' she said, 'I will be with you
immediately.'

The visitors went into a large and lofty
room, which seemed to serve as lodging for
the entire family. There was one window.
The walls, still bearing traces of the paint
that formerly covered them, were adorned
with a number of religious pictures, portraits

A VISIT OF GOETHE TO PALERMO 57

of saints, all black in their gilt frames.
Two large curtainless beds stood on one side;
opposite them, a small brown cupboard
like a writing-desk. The straw-chairs
had had their backs gilded, and the gilt
still shone here and there. The flooring
had given way in several places. But
everything was spotlessly clean. The
visitors approached the family grouped
around the window on the further side of
the room.

While the secretary was bawling into the
ear of Cagliostro's old mother, who was very
deaf, an explanation of the stranger's visit,
Goethe was taking stock of the persons and
things around him. A girl of sixteen,
comely, but marked with smallpox, was
leaning at the window ; near her a lad was
stooping, his face not less pitted. On the
other side of the window, extended on a
long chair, was a person who seemed over-
come with languor.

58 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

*We sat down,' says Goethe. 'The old
woman addressed a few questions to me
which I got my companion to translate, for
she expressed herself in the pure Sicilian
dialect. While she was speaking, I watched
the old woman with pleasure. She was of
middle height, but well formed. Her
features were regular, and age had respected
their pure and firm outlines. Her expression
had that serenity which is usually found in
deaf people. The tone of her voice was
low and pleasant.' Goethe told her that her
son had just been acquitted by the French
courts, and was then in England, where he
had been well received. ' Her replies were
exclamations of joy, mingled with pious
words that were very touching. And as
she then spoke more slowly, I could almost
understand her.' Meanwhile her daughter,
Cagliostro's sister, the woman they had
found washing the dishes, had re-entered.
She sat down beside the secretary, getting

A VISIT OF GOETHE TO PALERMO 59

him to repeat what the stranger said. She
had put on a clean apron, and carefully
arranged her hair in a net. She seemed of
a happy disposition, lively, and in robust
health. I should take her age to be forty.
Her blue and cheerful eyes gave a quick
wide-awake glance around, without the
least perceptible shade of mistrust. Seated,
she appeared taller than when she was
standing. She sat on her chair, her body
bent slightly forward, and her hands on her
knees. ' She closely resembled Cagliostro,'
adds Goethe, 'as he is represented in the
engravings that are so common. She
questioned me on my plans for making
excursions in Sicily, and told me that I
must certainly return to Palermo to join
them in the festival of St. Rosalia.'

Goethe resumed his conversation with
the mother, while the daughter talked to the
secretary. The latter said that her brother
still owed her for purchases she had made

6o CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

for him before he left Palermo. As he was
now in possession of such great treasure, he
must be able to return the money ; and she
asked the stranger to take charge of a letter
for him. For her situation was precarious.
She was a widow with three children ; one
daughter was being brought up in a con-
vent, another daughter was at home, and a
son was at present at school. She had her
mother also with her, and was also saddled
with the poor sick woman lying on the long
chair. And in spite of all her industry, she
found it very difficult to meet such obliga-
tions. * To be sure,' she said in conclusion,
' God will not let my efforts go unrewarded,
but the burden is too heavy, and I have
borne it too long.'

The young people took part in the con-
versation, which had become animated.
Goethe heard the old woman ask her
daughter : ' Does he follow our holy
religion ? ' And the younger woman

A VISIT OF GOETHE TO PALERMO 6i

tactfully replied : ' The stranger seems well
disposed to us, and it would hardly be polite
to ask him that question so soon.'

And when the good people learnt that
Goethe was soon to leave Palermo, they
became pressing in their entreaties that he
would return and spend with them the feast
of St. Rosalia, the patron saint of the town.
He would see in Palermo on that day
unequalled splendours. The visitor took
leave, with the promise to come back next
day for the letter which Cagliostro's sister
was to write to her brother. * And I came
away,' says Goethe, 'profoundly impressed
with this pious and quiet family.'

Next day, after dinner, he returned alone.
His appearance provoked surprise. The
letter was not yet finished. * Besides,'
added the kindly folk, * several of our
relatives wish to make your acquaintance.'
But Goethe assured them that he could not
defer his departure for more than one day.

62 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

At this moment entered the son, whom the
visitors had not seen on the former occasion.
He held in his hand the letter for Cagliostro,
which he had just fetched from the public
scribe, whom it was the custom of the
country to employ in such matters. The
lad had a quiet manner, marked with
reserve and melancholy. He spoke of his
uncle, his wealth, his large expenditure,
adding sadly : * Why does he desert his
family thus ? It would be our greatest joy
to see him back for a little at Palermo,
showing some interest in us. And people
say that he everywhere disowns us, posing
as a lord of illustrious birth.'

The girl came in. She had lost the
timidity of the previous evening, spoke of
her uncle, gave the visitor many messages
for him, and pressed Goethe to return to
Palermo for the festival of St. Rosalia.
The mother was as pressing as her children.
* Though it is not the proper thing for me

A VISIT OF GOETHE TO PALERMO 63

to entertain strange men,' she said, 'since
I have a daughter growing up and we
have good reasons for guarding against
scandal as well as actual peril, I must
say that you will always be very wel-
come among us when you return to the
town.'

* Yes, indeed ! ' cried the young people :
* we will take Signor everywhere during the
festival, and show him everything. We '11
sit in the best places for seeing and admir-
ing the procession. How delighted Signor
will be when he sees the great car, and
especially the illuminations ! '

Meanwhile the old woman had finished
reading the letter for Cagliostro. She
handed it to Goethe, saying : ' Tell my son
how glad I was to have news of him ; tell
him that I press him to my heart ' — and the
good creature extended her arms and folded
them across her bosom. * Every day I
pray God and the Blessed Virgin for him.

64 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

I send my blessing to him and his wife, and
have only one desire — to see him once more
before my death, with these eyes which
have shed so many tears for him.'

In reporting these words Goethe remarks
that they were rendered doubly impressive
by the peculiar grace of the Italian tongue
and the vivacity of the Sicilian dialect.
* And I left these good folk,' he adds, 'with
a full heart. All hands were stretched
towards me, and as I went down the stairs,
the children rushed to the balcony running
along in front of the window on the street.
Thence they still called out to me, with
joyous salutations, not to forget to come
back. I reached the corner of the street,
and for the last time saw them waving their
hands to me.'

Goethe, who never saw the Balsamo
family again, had an idea of sending them,
before he left Palermo, the money owed by
Cagliostro, justifying the gift by alleging

A VISIT OF GOETHE TO PALERMO 65

that the debtor would doubtless reimburse
him on his return to London. But on ex-
amining his purse, he found that his funds
were running low; and remembering that he
had arranged to penetrate into the interior
of Sicily, where the communications were
very difficult, he was afraid of leaving him-
self penniless.

One wonders whether the poor good
people, who put so much faith in the fortune
of their absent relative, ever learnt the
sequel of his adventures. Cagliostro fled
from London in April 1787, driven away by
his scandalous squabbles with the Courrier
de l' Europe, which was published there.
We can trace him to Basle, to Bienne in
Switzerland, where he lived on a pension
given him by one Sarrazin ; thence to
Aix in Savoy, Turin, Genoa, Verona, and
finally to Rome, where he was arrested on
December 27, 1789, by the sbirri of the J
Holy Office. He had just addressed a

E

66 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

petition to the National Assembly asking to
be allowed to return to France. Thrown
Hnto the fortress of St. Angelo, he was tried
as a freemason and condemned to death.
His penalty was commuted by the Pope to
perpetual imprisonment. While his wife,
the pretty Donna Lorenza, was shut up in
the convent of St. Apollinia, he himself was
incarcerated in the castle of Leone in the
duchy of Urbino, where he died on October

U^' ^795-

Such an end makes us indulgent towards
his extravagances and even his impostures.
It is melancholy to think of these priests
throwing a man into a lifelong dungeon
simply because his beliefs differed from
theirs.

At the same period in France, women,
children, and old people were guillotined,
though no crime could be charged against

\ them except the most beautiful of virtues,
loyalty to their sentiments. Priests in Rome,

A VISIT OF GOETHE TO PALERMO 67

\ Jacobins in Paris, were men of the same
stamp. History unites them in one common
anathema.

And CagHostro's end may be regretted,
not merely in the name of tolerance and
freedom, our supreme faith, but even for
the sake of the Revolution. The role of
revolutionary alchemist would have been
wonderfully interesting. At that period,
when a man was only valued in France
according to his eloquence or his antics,
Cagliostro would have stood forth in the
front rank, and his buffooneries would have
formed pleasant interludes in the sombre
and bloody monotony of crimes and horrors.

68 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

VI

TOUSSAINT DE BEAUSIRE

He belonged to an old burgher family of
Paris, of some mark in their day, one of the
streets being named after them in 1538 and
retaining the name to the present time.
His great-grandfather had been one of
the capable architects of the seventeenth
century, and academician in 1718. His
grandfather, Jean Baptiste Augustin, who
constructed the sewers from Menilmontant
to the Seine, organised the fetes in honour
of Louis XV. in 1744, and was elected a
member of the Academy of Architecture.
This man's son, another Jean Baptiste,
had no inclination for the arts, and it
was he who was the father of the Jean

TOUSSAINT DE BEAUSIRE 69

Baptiste Toussaint who espoused Nicole
Leguay.

Toussaint was born on November 6,
1 76 1, in the parish of St. Cosmo, to Jean
Baptiste de Beausire, royal lieutenant at the
Salthouse, and Jeanne F61icit6 Lamoureux
de La Genetiere. In 1762 he unhappily lost
his father, who was then residing in the
Rue des Francs- Bourgeois ; and he lost his
mother in 1771. Bereft of both parents by
the age of ten, he was placed by his uncle
and guardian, M. Bordenave, professor at
the Royal Academy of Surgery and member
of the Academy of Sciences, at the College
de Justice, whence he passed to the College
de la Marche on July 11, 1772. Beausire
had very little taste for study, and turned
his classrooms into a bear-garden. On
March 3, 1775, he was locked up at Saint-
Lazare for stealing sixty livres from his
teacher's drawer. After a confinement of
nearly two years he was sent back to the

70 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

College de la Marche. There he was
supposed to study physics and law, to fit
him for a procurator s place at the Chatelet ;
but on June 27, 1777, the Abbe Desfeux,
director of the college, announced that on
the preceding Sunday, between ten and
eleven in the morning, young Beausire had
absconded, in company with his cousin La
Genetiere, and taken refuge within the
precincts of the Temple. He had carried
off the greater part of his effects, not to
mention the watch of one of his companions.
When he had come to his last sou, the
young fellow returned like the prodigal son
to his guardian, who took him back to the
College de la Marche ; but the authorities
refused to receive him again.

Bordenave, tired of the misconduct of his
ward and hopeless of any improvement,
asked to be relieved of his office. He
became 'honorary guardian,' the active
guardianship being intrusted to one Michel

TOUSSAINT DE BEAUSIRE 71

Francois Bluteau, a citizen of Paris, whose
specialty was to undertake such duties for
a consideration.

We are now at the year 1780. Beausire
was then placed with a certain Genevois,
for a course of training for the military pro-
fession. A family meeting fixed his allow-
ance at 4800 livres. The fortune left by
his father was considerable for that time,
and Beausire himself had at this date an
income of nearly 30,000 livres. But in
May 1 78 1, the debts he had contracted
amounted to as much as 95,000 francs. He
assumed the title of count or chevalier, posed
as a gentleman of the Prince of Conde's
household, and swindled the tradesmen who
supplied him with goods and jewels. But
as Beausire was a very odd, amusing,
pleasant fellow, a relative named Madame
Destouches gave him a home, and began
to take steps to secure his entrance as a
volunteer into the navy. But the future

72 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

sailor soon had enough of the good lady,
and returned to his quarters in the Temple.
He had a furnished lodging at the 'Two
Crowns.' To obtain money for his neces-
sities, he had put most of his clothes in
pawn, and ordered new ones for which he
omitted to pay. He incurred debts of honour
also, which obtained for him the honour of
being arrested by order of the Marshals
of France and incarcerated in the prisons
of the Abbaye Saint-Germain. We shall
see what an incredible number of houses
of detention Beausire went through in the
course of his career. In comparison with
him, Latude was a mere amateur. He was
released after four months in jail, his family
having paid 668 livres for him. Ten days
had barely elapsed when he again took his
watch to the pawnshop, engaged a servant,
borrowed his watch under the pretext that
his own was mending, and carried that
also to the pawnbroker's.

TOUSSAINT DE BEAUSIRE 73

On the Quai Pelletier there was a jeweller
named Bourdillat, who had some gold rings
and earrings that took Beausire's fancy.

' Ah, Master Bourdillat, if you only knew
how charming Manon is ! '

* I quite believe you, Monsieur le Cheva-
lier.'

But as the chevalier had no money, he
gave a bill payable on February i. On
January 24 he came back, with one of the
earrings broken, and as Manon was not
only charming but ' deucedly impatient ' —

' Oh, they are all like that. Monsieur le
Chevalier ! '

So Beausire selected another pair of ear-
rings, worth about fifty-eight livres, not
paying for them, however, and came back
in a few days for the one that had been
repaired. Still he did not pay, and the
bill being dishonoured on February i,
Bourdillat prosecuted him for swindling.

In March 1782, Beausire went to live

74 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

at Senlls with his brother-in-law, Maitre
Leclerc-Duport, who had succeeded Bor-
denave as honorary guardian. ' At the
end of three months/ wrote Duport to the
Provost of Paris, 'after having borrowed
right and left and got jewellery from trades-
men on credit, Beausire absconded on July
1 5, taking with him everything he could lay
hands on that could be turned into money
in the capital.'

Fresh debts of honour brought Beausire
again before the marshals, who sent him
back to the Abbaye. At this period, 1783,
the amount of his debts, speaking only of
those which came to the knowledge of his
family, had risen to 250,000 francs. Set
at liberty after a detention of six months,
he conceived the idea of procuring money
by enlisting with three different recruiting
officers, and drawing his bounty in advance.
Then the Prince de Poix claimed him for his
regiment of dragoons. Things began to look

TOUSSAINT DE BEAUSIRE 75

serious. Maitre de Senneville, a Parlement
advocate, into whose hands his case was
placed by his family, succeeded in obtaining
an annulment, but before long, disgusted in
his turn, he threw up the case. To free
Beausire from his responsibilities to the
other two recruiting officers, his family had
him interned by lettre de cachet in the famous
madhouse at Picpus, where he was joined
a little later by Saint-Just.

In order to save what was left of his patri-
mony, half of which had been squandered in
a few years, his relatives had him declared
non compos mentis by the Chatelet on May
12, 1786, and an allowance of 4000 livres
was settled on him. Beausire vehemently
opposed this decree, and pursued with
special hatred the architect Louis Moreau,
the relative who had shown most severity
towards him in the family councils.

Meanwhile Toussaint had met the charm-
ing little Nicole Leguay. The young people

'je CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

were equally impecunious, but their debts
added together gave an imposing figure.
The Necklace affair came to light. From the
Bastille, Madame de La Motte succeeded in
warning her young friend, whom she called
the Baronne d'Oliva. The lovers betook
themselves arm-in-arm to Brussels, where
they hoped to live cheaper than in Paris.

On October 17, 1785, Nicole and her
lover were arrested in Brussels, and sent to
the Bastille on November 2. On March 11,
1786, Beausire was liberated, but only to be
consigned to the madhouse in accordance
with the decree of the court. He was finally
released in the month of August following.

And now he was married, and the father of
a fine baby in whom all France was inter-
ested. Alas ! marriage spelt good-bye to
love. Is that the rule? On January 19,
1789, Louis Joron, king's counsellor, com-
missary of the Chatelet, heard a sad story.
Marie Nicole Leguay, wife of Jean Baptiste

THE BARONNE DOLIVA.

Of TMf

UNIVERSITY

or

TOUSSAINT DE BEAUSIRE y^

Toussaint de Beausire, esquire, related to
him how, 'having come to know the said
Beausire, he had become absolute master
of her actions and will, as well as of her
fortune and goods, so that there resulted a
male child who was still living/ Nicole
wept copiously. * I was barely married
before I experienced shocking treatment
at the hands of my husband. He ill-used
me, and beat me several times. He is
leading the most scandalous life, passing
his nights in gambling hells, and going
with other women. And all this time I
am confined to the house, where I am in
absolute want. We live in the same house,
but lodge separately — he in a fine front room,
I in a poky little box behind. He rarely
has his meals at home, and when he does,
eats in another room. So far from giving
me money to buy things, he has pawned
all my linen and goods and jewellery. And
now he wants me to go away, to retire into

78 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

a convent, but will not give me the means
of subsistence. So, beside myself, I ran
away last Monday, taking the few things
for my personal use that were left, and
went to the Hotel Montpensier at the Palais
Royal, where I had already stayed with him
before our marriage, when he loved me.
I 've come to sue my husband, so that the
lieutenant-general of police, after appoint-
ing a convent to which I may retire, may
compel him to give me an allowance that
will enable me to live with my child.'

Nicole Leguay accordingly entered a
convent. But there she fell into a decline.
Country air was prescribed. She was taken
to Fontenay-sous-Bois ; but her constitu-
tion was ruined. She died on June 24,
1789, and was buried in the cemetery of
Vincennes.

' She was very beautiful,' said Madame
de La Motte, 'and very good, and very
stupid.' And thus her fate is explained.

TOUSSAINT DE BEAUSIRE 79

But we are waxing sentimental while
already the revolutionary cannon are
thundering.

Beausire was among the conquerors of V
the Bastille. We know how those honour-
able citizens who, for the most part,
had had the modesty after the victory to
run away and hide, became astonishingly
numerous a few days later, when it was
recognised that their deeds were brilliant
achievements. This heroism was rewarded,
in Beausire's case, by his selection to
command the battalion of the district of
the fathers of Nazareth. He gave his men
a flag embroidered with a two-headed
hydra crushed by an athlete, with the
motto, proceeding from the gaping beak
of a cock : ^ He is scotched at last ! ' He
also gave uniforms to three needy citizens.
On October 5 he marched on Versailles.
On June 21, 1791, 'the day of the tyrant's
return,' he exclaims, he was constantly ~

8o CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

under arms. The ardour he displayed on
that memorable day was such that he caught
a cold in his chest, which, checking the course
of his exploits, compelled him to retire to the
country. He settled at Choisy-on- Seine,
where he married, on October 6, 1791, one
Adelaide Duport, daughter of a hat-maker.
Unable to display his military valour,
Beausire nevertheless cherished an un-
diminished ardour in the cause of liberty.
At the time of the elections for the National
Convention, he drew up a circular in favour
of the right candidates.

Citizens !

The country is in danger 1 Her safety depends
on us. Let us unite, and may our union be
an impenetrable rampart against faction and
intrigue ! Despotism was about to enslave us
anew. The good citizens have shown them-
selves, and the machinations of our tyrants are
about to be unveiled. We were within an inch
of ruin; court cabals and fanaticism had hollowed
out the abyss. But for the energy and patriotism

TOUSSAINT DE BEAUSIRE 8i

of our brethren we should have been dashed over.
The choice is between freedom and slavery, and
on the choice you will make in your primary
assemblies depends the fate of the empire. Let
us rally as one man. Let personal interest be
silent; let selfishness, that scourge of humanity,
be annihilated !

This eloquence continues for a good
space yet. Beausire had it stuck on a
huge placard, and posted at his expense,
not merely in his own commune, but in all
the communes adjacent.

Will it surprise us to find that his fellow-
citizens, filled with admiration, elected him
procurator of the commune of Choisy-on-
Seine? He did great things in his office :
saw to the storing of grain ; forced the
farmers of the district, in the name of
liberty, to thrash their corn, then bring
it to market at Choisy ; and brought to
their senses the charcoal-burners who w^ere
awaiting a more favourable opportunity for
selling their merchandise. He started public

F

82 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

assemblies, and inaugurated their sittings
with a speech which has been preserved.

Citizens !

This is henceforth to be the place of your
meetings. It was one of the appanages of
the despots. It is destined to the reunion of
several neighbouring communes, and you will
all make one whole. Here men will come to
drink in the maxims of liberty, which alone can
assure the happiness of ourselves and our children.
They will find in us friends and brothers ; always
watchful, incessantly attentive to the public good !
If some one strayed from the inestimable principles
of our holy revolution, your wise and paternal
counsels would bring him back to the right path.
Continue your labours, citizens, propagate the
irrevocable and fundamental principles of our
republic. Have an eye to the malevolent of
every class, strengthen public spirit. The esteem
of all good citizens will be the sweet recompense
due to your zeal and devotion in the cause of
liberty !

These brave words did not fall on deaf
ears. On the third day of the second de-
cade of Brumaire, in the Year ii. of the

TOUSSAINT DE BEAUSIRE 83

French Republic one and indivisible, the
day of the festival of the Jerusalem Arti-
choke (November 3, 1793), some of the
* friends and brothers, always watchful,
incessantly attentive to the public good,' as
Beausire said, * moved by the solicitude for
the public good which made them direct
an attentive eye on all that might con-
tribute to foster and awaken republican
ardour in the youth of France,' as they
said themselves, denounced the Sieur
Beausire to the Committee of Public Safety
' as a quondam noble, formerly attached
to the quondam Comte d'Artois.'

No time was wasted. On the margin of
the information are the words * To be
arrested.' On November 5, 1793, the pro-
curator of the Commune of Choisy-on-Seine
lay in the prison of the Luxembourg.
Next day the Commune of Choisy, sum-
moned by the sound of the bell, sent a
deputation to the committee to demand the

84 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

release of their procurator, *an honourable
man and a strong republican.' But what
did that matter ? The deputation of twelve
members, on arriving, could not have
an audience of the committee at their
morning sitting. Nine of them, retiring
to the terrace of the Feuillants to dine and
wait for the resumption of the sitting,
were surrounded by an armed force and
taken to the guard-house of the Conven-
tion. At eleven o'clock, five of them were
set at liberty, but the other four were kept
under lock and key. Their names were
Barier, Nourrit, Joanis, and Chevillard.
They were put through an interrogation.

' We have come to Paris to ask for the
liberty of Citizen Beausire.'

Before the administrators of the police
department. Citizen Deschamps, aide-de-
camp to the Paris Militia, and Citizen
Didier, juror on the revolutionary tribunal,
declared : ' Barier, a notary of Choisy, is a

TOUSSAINT DE BEAUSIRE 85

member of the quondam club of the Sainte-
Chapelle ; Nourrit, a painter of Choisy,
highly approved the massacre of the
Champ de Mars, and there exists against
him an information to the People's Society ;
Joanis, commandant of the National Guards,
has deliberately slandered the great patriots
Marat and Robespierre ; Chevillard, a
coffee-house keeper, has withdrawn from the
People's Society because that had ap-
proved the condemnation of the tyrant,
telling several of the members that they
were villains.' Poor Beausire's case was
worse than before.

The four delegates were kept locked up
until January 1794, and the inhabitants of
Choisy-on- Seine were careful to send no
more deputations.

To win his release Beausire thought that
the best course was to denounce those of
his companions in captivity who were im-
prudent enough to let fall compromising

S6 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

words. This he did proudly, writing on
July 30, 1794: *I do not pine for liberty,
since I have been able, even in my prison,
to be useful to the commonwealth by re-
vealing the plots that were in weaving
there.' And as the Committee of Public
Safety might consider it advisable to leave
him in a position where he could do them
such good service, he hastened to add :
* But I believe that I should be still more
useful to my fellow-citizens elsewhere than
here, and that it is which makes me desire
the more ardently to be restored to my
country.'

As this appeal met with no response, the
prisoner returned to the charge on August
18 : * In the course of Ventose, I was lucky
enough to discover the plots being hatched
in prison by the Grammonts, the Dillons,
and others. I denounced them ; the traitors
were punished, and I still remain in irons.'

Beausire found means in these circum-

TOUSSAINT DE BEAUSIRE 87

stances to pay off an old score against that
Louis Moreau who, as we have seen, did
his best to curb his youthful follies. He
included him in his denunciations, and
brought him to the guillotine. * I call the
Supreme Being to witness,' wrote Moreau
to the revolutionary tribunal on July 9, 1 794,
* that no scheme whatever has come to my
knowledge for laying sacrilegious hands on
the representatives of the people. The
witnesses can bring no evidence, nor even
probabilities, against me. Citizen Beau-
sire, my near relative, who spent a repre-
hensible youth, found me against him in
our family councils. He owes the pre-
servation of a part of his fortune to a
decree of the courts we obtained against
him. On that account he has conceived
against me a hatred which would render
him culpable, and the effect of which would
to-day be fatal, if the equity of the jurors
and of the tribunal, on whose judgment my

88 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

life depends, did not rectify it.' The poet
Ducis, ' of the quondam French Academy,'
intervened in his favour. * Citizen Moreau.'
he said, ' has always been submissive to
the laws. He gave 30,000 livres towards
the war against the brigands of La
Vendee. He is married, and the father
of a family. His wife and children are
in tears.' It was labour lost. Moreau
was condemned and executed, on the
very day when he wrote the defence we
have just read. He was an architect of
great merit, who had early in his career
obtained the diploma of the Ecole de
Rome, was admitted to the Academy in
1762, became director of the city fabrics
in 1763, and architect to the king in
1783. It was he who designed the facade
of the Palais Royal on the Rue Saint-
Honore.

We are reminded of a very similar
case. While he was detained at Picpus,

TOUSSAINT DE BEAUSIRE 89

Beausire had perhaps met there the
great Saint-Just. Having attained power
at this very time, Saint- Just had the
pleasure of satisfying his rancour in the
same way. One of his victims, Armand
Brunet, wrote boldly on August 9, 1794,
to the president of the National Con-
vention —

Citizen President,

A prisoner of six months' duration, I venture
to bring the following fact to your notice : —

Saint-Just, as bad a son as he is a citizen, had
robbed his mother of her most valuable posses-
sions. He had reviled and ill-treated her. I
was asked by this hapless mother to obtain the
imprisonment of her unnatural son, and he was
confined at Picpus by order of de Crosne, then
lieutenant-general of police. The hatred Saint-
Just swore to me makes me regard him as the
author of my arrest, my conscience being ab-
solutely void of reproach.

Brunet was not mistaken. Saint-Just,
to complete his work, had also brought the

90 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

excellent Thiroux de Crosne to the guillo-
tine, who during his term of office as chief
of police had perhaps had reason to reproach
himself with being somewhat foolish, but
certainly with being too kind.

Meanwhile Beausire, in spite of his zeal
— and perhaps because his services in
prison were so well appreciated — far from
obtaining his liberty, was transferred to
Sainte-Pdagie on August 12, to Plessis on
November 8, to the Hospice of the Arch-
bishopric on December 6, 1794, whence
he was brought before the revolutionary
tribunal on April 3, 1795. He was ac-
quitted.

Beausire died many years later, on
February 3, 18 18, being then controller of
taxes of Pas-de-Calais. He had become
a devoted servant of the Empire, and re-
tained his office at the Restoration. By his
second wife, Adelaide Duport, he left six
children.

TOUSSAINT DE BEAUSIRE 91

In his excellent book, Le Marquis de La
Rouerie, M. G. Lenotre says : * Secondary
characters like Lalligand and Chevetel hold
a more important place in the story of the
Terror than most people think. The Re-
volution may be compared to a picture that
needs new canvas. It has been so often
painted, and painted again. To find what
lies beneath, it must be turned over, the
canvas must be picked off thread by thread,
to show the original coat of colour. One
might hold forth for a thousand years on
the political ideas of Robespierre — who had
none — on the legality of the trial of the
king, on the official causes of the fall of the
Girondins, without knowing the Revolu-
tion one whit better. You have to plunge
into the depths. What is to be found there
is worth bringing to the light.'

A slight place will perhaps be conceded
to Beausire among the Lalligands and
Chdvetels, whose personalities M. Lenotre

92 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

has brought to life again. Toussaint
de Beausire appears to have been the
average type of revolutionary. Others
had a more brilliant fate : Mirabeau, be-
cause he spoke better ; Carnot, because he
was more intelligent ; Saint-Just, because
he was a still greater hypocrite ; Robes-
pierre, because he was clever at striking
attitudes which at a distance produced a
certain effect ; but on examining them more
closely you will find in each of them a
Toussaint de Beausire. The value of the
coin is greater, to be sure ; the stamp is
identical.

And with this observation, which will not
perhaps meet with unquestioning approval,
let us turn to Madame de La Motte.

THE COUNTESS DE LA MOTTE 93

VII

THE COUNTESS DE LA MOTTE AT
THE SALPETRIERE

After the sentence on Jeanne de Valois
had been executed, pubHc opinion veered
round in her favour ; and the movement is
duly noted in the journal of the bookseller
Hardy. Such a revulsion is in fact almost
a general law. Here is a woman guilty of a
crime : at the first moment she is the object
of bitter indignation ; people clamour for
her death ; abandoned to the mob she would
be lynched. Months pass by ; the un-
happy woman is incarcerated, and is now
alone, feeble, deserted. It begins to be
thought that the prosecution was merciless
and the condemnation brutal, while re-

94 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

membrance of the crime is dulled, or it loses
its horror as men's minds are familiarised
with it. Ere long the public hear nothing
but the pleadings of their own emotions and
chivalrous sentiments. Is it certain that
the woman was guilty ? She had enemies.
Some say she is a martyr.

The circumstances of Madame de La
Motte's punishment had been horrible.
They spread through Paris, and made a
deep impression on the populace. People
retailed her imprecations on the queen
and the Cardinal de Rohan, her charges
against them, her accusations against the
Parlement, all honey and indulgence to
people of importance, always ready to
grovel to the court, the nobility, and the
clergy. ' Hardly had the sentence on the
Dame de La Motte been carried into execu-
tion,' writes Hardy, 'when a certain section
of the public, touched with compassion,
perhaps because they regarded her as the

THE COUNTESS DE LA MOTTE 95

victim of a court intrigue, ventured to
blame the Parlement, believing that that
court had shown undue severity in the
matter. They endeavoured to bring its
judgment into bad odour, and clamoured
against the violence it had been compelled
to employ.'

'It is not surprising,' we read in the
Memoirs of the Princess de Lamballe, * that
Paris, which till this moment had delighted
in the queen as in a beneficent divinity
whose mere look carried consolation to the
souls of the wretched, could not understand
how she had abandoned Madame de La
Motte to the horror of her fate ; and as
the Frenchman must go to extremes, he
passed from idolatry to indignation. Public _j
opinion began to vacillate, and the private
enemies of this princess stimulated the dis-
content. The queen no longer saw the
crowd pressing about her to catch a glimpse
of her, no longer heard their flattering

g6 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

murmurs of delight. No one told the
queen that the coldness the crowd mani-
fested towards her might have fatal results,
and far from seeking to destroy it, she
took offence. Her features, hitherto so
sweet and caressing, expressed in public
nothing but haughtiness and disdain for
the opinion of those whom she never
dreamt of regarding as able to dispose of
her destiny and that of her family.'

Engravings in the picture-shops repre-
sented the countess in the costume of the
Salpetriere : a dress of coarse grey drugget,
with stockings of the same colour, a brown
woollen petticoat, a round cap, a coarse
linen chemise and a pair of sabots. The
journals related the most trivial details of
her life in prison. Only the most unfeeling
could fail to be touched by them.

'The situation of the countess,' said the

Gazette d' Utrecht, ' is beginning to interest

^ even people who were most unmoved at

THE COUNTESS DE LA MOTTE 97

her punishment. It is quite a mistake to
beheve that the unfortunate woman enjoys
any marks of preference over her com-
panions in imprisonment. She is stretched
on a bed of pain, which she steeps in her
tears. It is true that beneficent hands
have flown to her succour ; but the custom
prevaiHng in this house of distributing
among all the inmates the marks of kind-
ness intended by charitable souls for one
of them results in her scarcely feeling any
effects from the beneficence of those who
wish to assist her. Her complexion is
yellow. She has become extremely thin.
She is mixed up with a crowd of women,
the scum of nature and society, branded
like herself, who yet have some considera-
tion for the unhappy woman whom they
call *' the countess," and whom they en-
deavour to console. The Dame de La
Motte weeps only for her lost honour, and
not for her dreadful plight. She has to

G

98 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

sleep with three others, on a mattress
terribly hard. She is obliged for the most
part to pass the night on a bench ; or,
when awake, she does nothing but groan
in a room where the windows are ten feet
from the ground. There no light is ever
seen, except the half-intercepted daylight.
She wears the uniform of the establishment.
She has only a few wretched dressing-
jackets and round caps ; but when they
are worn out, she will have to be satisfied
with fustian rags. Her food is black bread;
on Sundays an ounce of meat, on Fridays
a piece of cheese, on the other days some
beans or lentils soaked in plenty of water.'

Anecdotes were told about her to bring
tears to the eyes, and people did weep.
She had written to the Archbishop of
Paris a letter 'sublime in the picture of
suffering she there draws, and in the piety
and resignation she gives expression to.
M. du Tillet, director of the General

THE COUNTESS DE LA MOTTE 99

Hospital, consoled her, exhorting her to
dry her tears —

' I will dry my tears, sir, since you will
have it so ; but you will at least allow those
of gratitude to flow.'

*The Dame de La Motte,' notes the
Gazette de Leyde, ' is becoming more and
more stoical and resigned to her fate. She
employs herself the greater part of the
day in reading and meditating on the
ascetic book on the Imitation of Jesus
Christ, '

In reading and meditating the Imitation
of Christ ! — and the queen dared to say
that she was a criminal ! She was a saint !

One of these anecdotes daily purveyed
to the public set all Europe thrilling. It
became known — and the gazettes were on
the point of issuing special editions, though
the use of big-type posters was not yet
invented — it became known that the poor
women at the Salp6triere, young and old,

100 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

thieves and light women, the scum of the
human race, touched by so much virtue
and resignation, by such kindHness and
grace, had clubbed together, one going
without her snuff, another not sending her
fancy-man the usual three sous a week, in
order to provide the countess with a varia-
tion from the usual menu — rye bread, boiled
lentils and cheese — namely, a dish of peas
and bacon.

Dear, simple, primitive souls! Christ,
as the Gazette de Hollande eloquently
observed, knew the human soul when, at
Golgotha, scorning the rich, He bent His
head towards the repentant thief.

And thus the rich and noble were piqued
into emulation. The Salpetriere had not
received so many and such brilliant visitors
for many a long day : the Mar^chale de
Mouchy, the Duchess de Duras, Madame
du Bourg, and a hundred others. An
anonymous letter written from the house of

THE COUNTESS DE LA MOTTE loi

detention to the Baronne de Saint- Remy,
sister of Jeanne de Valois, said: 'AH the
grandees have been to see your sister ;
they all take her part. Who would not ?
God alone knows the truth and purity of
her heart ! ' The Duke of Orleans, who
was at the head of the Freemasons and
preparing for his revolutionary part, saw
what profit he might make of the business,
and the duchess took the lead in this
charming movement of compassion. * Draw
up a memorial to the Duchess of Orleans,'
said the letter to Marie Anne de Saint-
R6my.

Naturally, there was some talk of plans
of escape. One of them was especially
picturesque. 'The countess,' said the
Gazette d' Utrecht of August i, 'has at-
tempted to escape. She had already made
a hole through which her head would go.
She stuck in this opening, so that she
could go neither forward nor backward.

102 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

Fright seized her : she struggled in vain,
and her cries brought up the warders, who
found her in that position. Her attempt
has only increased the rigour of her deten-
tion.'

Among the compassionate souls so much
touched by the fate of Jeanne de Valois,
there was one who holds a peculiar place
by reason of her delicious grace and kindli-
ness.

Louise de Carignan was left at eighteen
years the widow of a husband who had
died of dissipation — Stanislas de Bourbon,
Prince de Lamballe. * The greatest beauty
of Madame de Lamballe,' say the Gon-
courts, ' was the serenity of her features.
The very brilliance of her eyes was restful.
In spite of the shocks and the fever of a
nervous ailment, there was not a wrinkle,
not a cloud on her beautiful forehead,
caressed by the long fair tresses which later
on still curled about the pike. An Italian

THE COUNTESS DE LA MOTTE 103

by race, Madame de Lamballe had all the
graces of the northern peoples. Her soul
was as serene as her face. She was
tender and caressing, always ready to make
sacrifices, devoted in little things, dis-
interested above all. Her mind had the
virtues of her temperament — tolerance,
simplicity, amiability, quiet cheerfulness.
Seeing no evil, and unwilling to believe in
it, Madame de Lamballe fashioned things
and the world to her own image, and
banishing every evil thought by the charity
of her illusions, her talk breathed unruffled
peace and sweetness.'

The horrible fate of Madame de La Motte
made a deep impression on the sensitive
and excitable nature of the young princess.
Her imagination took fire at the thought of
a judicial error. She remembered having
seen her respected father-in-law, the gentle
and charitable Duke de Penthievre, receiving
Madame de La Motte at Chateauvilain with

104 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

the honours reserved for princesses of the
blood. She was on intimate terms with
her sister-in-law the Duchess of Orleans.
She presided over masonic lodges. At
this very time, feeling that the queen was
a little neglected among the enmities spring-
ing up and growing dangerous around her,
the Princess de Lamballe, who had quietly-
withdrawn before Madame de Polignac,
returned to the side of the queen ; and yet
she could not refrain from bearing to the
Salpdtriere the consolations of her great
heart. But natures like hers are not
easily understood. The superior of the
Salpetriere at this time was Madame
Robin, known as Sister Victoire. One day
Madame de Lamballe insisted on seeing
the prisoner, relying on her rank as a
princess of the blood to open all doors be-
fore her. Sister Victoire declined to allow
her, believing that she was actuated merely
by a vain curiosity which would only

THE COUNTESS DE LA MOTTE 105

have inflicted additional humiliation on
the condemned woman.

' But why cannot I see Madame de La
Motte ? '

* Because, madame, that is not part of
her sentence.'

io6 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

VIII

THE ESCAPE

Madame de La Motte was attended at
the Salpetriere by one of the prisoners, a
girl named Angelique, who had been
condemned to perpetual imprisonment for
having in the despair of desertion killed
her child. About the end of November
1786, a sentry on duty in one of the court-
yards of the hospital, passing the stock
of his musket through a broken pane
of glass, wakened Angelique sleeping
within. The soldier told her that some one
was scheming to set her and her mistress
free. Next day he handed her a note
written in sympathetic ink, the writing of
which she made visible by holding it to

THE ESCAPE 107

the fire. This was the beginning of a
correspondence. * The important thing is,'
said the unknown benefactor, who had
taken the fate of Jeanne de Valois to heart,
'to obtain a model of the key opening
the gate by which the prisoner will have
to go out' But how was this model to
be procured.'* Jeanne had the idea to
examine carefully every day the key hang-
ing from the bunch of the nun who came
to visit her. Then, when the good sister
had left her, she tried to draw an exact
reproduction of it on a blank sheet of paper.
Next day she would examine it again, and
correct her drawing in one point or another.
The hole in the lock gave the dimensions
of the key. Jeanne considered at last
that her drawing, after being touched up
more than twenty times, ought to be pretty
exact. She had it passed to the sentry,
and he, a few days afterwards, brought
back a key which opened the lock.

io8 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

One after another, the sentinel had
conveyed to her the various parts of a
disguise — coat, breeches, and hat. Mean-
while Angelique, who was to have been
a lifelong prisoner, had been set at liberty,
and another prisoner, named Marianne,
wife of Desrues the poisoner, was given
as a servant to Madame de La Motte.
But some time elapsed without a reappear-
ance on the part of the sentry, and Madame
de La Motte was becoming alarmed, when
she received by the same channel a note
which said : ' Your dear Angelique is free ;
name the day when you want to be free too.'

*The 5th of June' was her reply. She
knew that on that day Sister Fanchon,
whose duty it was to shut the doors along

<^^^^Pi^H

1

THE ESCAPE 109

the corridor, was going to the Bois de
Vincennes.

She put on her disguise : a frock coat
of royal blue, black vest, and breeches, a
tall round hat ; she took a light walking-
stick and put on a pair of skin gloves.
The key opened the doors. The two
fugitives reached the courtyard, where they
mingled with the crowd. They knew that
they were to make for the Seine, where a
boat with two men on board was awaiting
them. They found the boat, and took
their places. The men rowed rapidly to
Charenton ; on the bank was a fiacre to
drive them to Maison- Rouge, where they
passed the first night.

Provins was the second stage. In the
streets of the little town, a group of officers,
staring at the young women, saw through
the disguise. One of them left the rest.

* My fine cavalier, were you to lead me
to the pit of hell I 'd follow you/ he said.

no CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

Madame de La Motte was speechless with
anxiety.

' I see what it is,' continued the soldier.
* You 're a young lady running away from
the convent, and going to join the happy
man who has your heart.'

* Sir, if you are so sure of it, please
don't follow me. Isn't your persistence
indiscreet ? '

Clearly an indiscretion. The gallant
strode away.

Taking warning by the incident, Madame
de La Motte judged it prudent to throw off
her disguise. Marianne bought at a shop
in the town some things suitable to a
countrywoman — a basket, some butter and
eggs.

A league from Provins, rows of greyish
willows edge the banks of the Voulzie,
which flows on, a clear and merry stream,
between green meadows. Clumps of rushes
and long grasses form curtains in which

THE ESCAPE iii

the wind rustles. There the two fugitives
found a hiding-place. Their male attire
was tied up In a bundle, a stone was
fastened to it, and It was thrown Into deep
water. And here is Jeanne walking on
the highroad, a country peasant woman,
with short petticoats, looking very dainty
in her many-laced linen bodice, her cloth
apron, her petticoat of calamanco with
stripes of blue, pink, and white, her little
feet in a clumsy pair of shoes with shining
buckles. She has in her basket some fresh
butter and white eggs she Is going to sell
at the next market. Passing peasants hail
the fresh, pretty, laughing girl, and give
her a lift in their waggons. And thus
she comes to Troyes, whence she reaches
the environs of Bar-sur-Aube.

She arrived at the Crottieres, open
quarries whence is extracted the ragstone
of which many of the houses in the town
are constructed. The Crottieres served as

112 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

an asylum to vagabonds and tramps. A
little fir copse divides them from the road
that leads from Bar-sur-Aube to Clairvaux.
From this height you get a view of the
town encircled by the shining arms of the
Aube, behind the village of Fontaine, so
picturesque with its old bridge and its
whirling, clicking mills. There the Bresse
flows up to join it, like a ribbon gleaming
in the luxuriant grass, and plaiting itself
capriciously with the quivering ranks of
reeds. And in the distance the hills of
Sainte-Germaine arch themselves into a
sombre cupola, St. Peter's showing the
graceful outlines of its pointed spire. In
the darkness of the Crottieres the fugitive
lay hidden. She sent Marianne with notes
to relatives and old friends whom she knew
in Bar-sur-Aube. M. de Surmont, who
had taken her into his house many years
before when she fled from the convent of
Longchamp, came to her at night. They

MADAME DE LA MOTTE IN PEASANT COSTUME.

THE ESCAPE 113

sat talking by the roadside. He left her
some money. *When the hapless woman,'
says Beugnot, ' fleeing from the Salpetriere,
hid herself in the quarries during the night,
my mother, who had never ceased to main-
tain her innocence, even after the judgment,
had the courage to go and seek her there.
She restored to her a gift of twenty louis
which the countess had intrusted to her
for the relief of distress in the time of her
prosperity. She did more. She raised the
poor disgraced woman in her own eyes,
by bringing her own purity and virtue in
contact with her.'

From Bar-sur-Aube, Jeanne and her
faithful companion reached Lorraine,
Nancy, then Luneville, then Metz, Thion-
ville, Ettingen and Hollerich, in the grand-
duchy of Luxembourg, where they were
received by a lady named Schilz. Through
Belgium, by Bruges and Ostend, they at last
gained the shores of England, and from

H

114 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

Dover posted to London, where Madame
de La Motte was able to throw herself into
the arms of her husband, on August 4,
1787, at four o'clock in the afternoon.

What mysterious hand had favoured her
flight? She never knew. The opinion of
the time was that the queen herself had
opened a way of escape. Madame Campan
had no suspicion of it. ' Through a series
of misapprehensions which guided the pro-
ceedings of the court, it was found that the
cardinal and the woman La Motte were
equally guilty but unequally punished, and
they wished to redress the balance. This
new crime confirmed the Parisians in the
idea that this creature, who had never
succeeded in penetrating even so far as
the antechamber of the queen's women,
had really awakened the interest of that
unfortunate princess.'

LIFE OF MADAME DE LA MOTTE 115

IX

MADAME DE LA MOTTE WRITES THE
STORY OF HER LIFE

The Countess de La Motte rejoined her
husband in London on August 4, 1787.
' Several times, during the period I spent with
her,' writes the count, *she tried to destroy
herself, and for mere trifles, the most in-
significant vexations. Twice I held her
back by her clothes when she attempted
to fling herself out of window. When
she rejoined me in London, I avoided all
occasions of causing her the least annoy-
ance. I quickly perceived that the great
misfortunes she had suffered had much
embittered her temper, and that tact and
caution were needed to keep her in good

\

ii6 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

humour. In spite of all my patience I
could not help saying one day that her
woes were all caused by her own wayward-
ness and extravagances. I had no sooner
uttered the words than she flung herself
on a dagger she happened to be holding
in her hand, and, despite my promptitude
in running to her, along with the people
who were in the house, we could not
prevent her from striking herself below
the breast, and we saw her fall helpless
to the floor.'

Husband and wife were in extreme
poverty. La Motte, spendthrift as he was,
had not been long in getting rid of all the
money and jewels he had taken from the
jeweller Gray after his flight from Bar-
sur-Aube in 1785. An English lord,
touched with compassion for the pitiable
victim of a judicial error, gave a pension
to the countess, and she found a second
protector in Charles Alexandre de Calonne,

LIFE OF MADAME DE LA MOTTE 117

the former controller-general of the finances,
who had worked actively to secure the
acquittal of the cardinal from a desire to
wound the queen, and who, as we shall
see, exerted himself by and by to deal
Marie Antoinette the final blow. Jeanne
was at this time thirty-one years old, and
as pretty, lively, and piquant as ever. Old
Calonne became quite sparkish again.
And his hatred for the queen was thus
blent with his attachment to the little
countess, a conjunction destined to pro-
duce the most monstrous of collaborations.

The Necklace case had made a tre-
mendous sensation throughout Europe, and
especially in England. A book by Madame
de La Motte relating the story in full detail
was sure to be a success which would pro-
vide her with the means of subsistence.
As her style was hopelessly defective,
Calonne introduced to her Serre de Latour,
a French journalist who had taken refuge

ii8 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

in London after running away with the
wife of the intendant of Auvergne, and was
there editing the Courrier de V Europe, a
news-sheet financed by a speculator named
Swinton. And Calonne put his own services
at her disposal.

The tide of slander was rising around
Marie Antoinette. ' Listen,' write the
Goncourts, 'listen to a nation's whispers
and murmurs, rising, falling, falling, rising,
between the Markets and Versailles,
between Versailles and the Markets.
Listen to the populace, listen to the chair-
bearers, listen to the courtiers bringing
calumny from Marly and then post-haste
to Paris ! Listen to the marquises in the
actresses' dressing-rooms, in the drawing-
rooms of the Sophie Arnoulds and the
Contats, of harlots and opera-girls. Inter-
rogate the street, the ante-room, the salons,
the court, the royal family itself. Calumny
is everywhere, even at the very skirts of

LIFE OF MADAME DE LA MOTTE 119

the queen/ And what fuel the pen of the
countess was about to furnish to the fire !
It was dreaded at Versailles. Madame de
La Motte and Calonne were being watched.
The Duchess of Polignac set out for London,
and condescended to negotiate with the La
Mottes, offering them money. But Jeanne
worked herself up to a fine pitch of indig-
nation, and made preposterous demands.
She claimed her rehabilitation, in addition
to the money and all that had been taken
from her. Her Memoirs appeared.

* I can attest,' wrote Madame Campan,
* that I saw in the queen's hands a manu-
script of the Memoirs of the woman La
Motte, brought her from London : it was
corrected by the hand of Calonne himself
at every place where total ignorance of the
customs of the court had made her commit
gross blunders.' * M. de Latour,' writes the
Count de La Motte on the other hand,
' handed the manuscript to M. de Calonne,

120 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

who made changes and corrections and
additions without number, almost on every
page : all these corrections were written
with his own hand, and for the most part in
pencil.'

In the course of her examinations at the
Bastille, Jeanne de Valois had declared that
the Necklace had been stolen by Cagliostro.
Afterwards, before the Parlement, she
asserted that the robber was the Cardinal
de Rohan. ' In the matter of the Necklace,'
she had written when on the point of
appearing before her judges, 'it is an un-
doubted fact that the king and queen had
several years ago refused to purchase it.
If it was true that the queen had taken a
new fancy for the jewel, she could have got
it without any mystery with the funds at her
disposal.'

But she once more changed her tune. In
her Mdmoire justificatif ^^ declared that the
Necklace had been taken by the queen.

LIFE OF MADAME DE LA MOTTE 121

An extract will enable the reader to
appreciate the Mdmoire justijicatif, ' I need
no longer put any restraint on myself,' wrote
Madame de La Motte. * I suppose myself at
this moment in regions of independence and
peace, where my sufferings will, I hope, win
me a place, relating, without prejudice as
without passion, to the celestial throng the
sad dreams I have had on earth.'

The Cardinal de Rohan, as we know, had
only arrived in Vienna as ambassador a
year after the departure of Marie Antoinette
to become the wife of the dauphin, after-
wards Louis XVI. Obviously, then, he could
not have seen the young archduchess there.
This was no obstacle to the following para-
graph, in Jeanne de La Motte's dispassionate
story to the * celestial throng ' : —

The Cardinal de Rohan told me, and repeated
to me several times, that the grievances of
Her Majesty rested on a poor foundation. He
confided to me that, at the time when he was

122 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

ambassador at Venice, the queen was still an
archduchess. Emboldened by the lightness of
N her conduct, he had ventured to offer his homage,
which was not rejected. His happiness had
passed as a dream. The marked favours
obtained by a German officer had turned his
head till he allowed himself to drop most in-
discreet remarks.

This extract will give an idea of the tone
and the veracity of the work, which was
presented to the public under the guise of
the finest sentiments — 'my sensitiveness
and delicate notions of honour,' said Jeanne.
The book also derived something from the
persuasive faculty which she undoubtedly
possessed. Eight thousand copies were
printed, and in a short time more than seven
thousand had been disposed of. It was at
once translated into English and German.
In Germany it appeared in two different
editions, one published by the booksellers
of Brunswick, the other by those of
Nuremberg.

LIFE OF MADAME DE LA MOTTE 123

— \

* In London,' writes M. Pierre de Nolhac,

* Madame de La Motte published her odious
Memoirs, a medley of passion and falsehood,
which dragged the crown into the mud of
the gutter. Between the queen's word 3
and the word of the adventuress France
hesitated. Ere long she ventured to make
her choice, and the pamphlets of this*^
woman caused the definitive acceptance of ^
the legend of Marie Antoinette's vices. It
was in them that Fouquier-Tinville after-
wards found his arguments, on them that he ^
based the justice of his cause.' ' At the
court, as well as in the city,' said Maitre
Labori in a speech at the advocates' con-
ference in 1888, 'every one showed himself
ready to credit the queen with every form
of wickedness and vice, and the legend of
her debaucheries has not even yet dis-
appeared from history.'

And yet Maitre Labori himself, devoted
as he is to the memory of Marie Antoinette,

124 y CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

admits that the countess must have had
relations with her. We affirm, on the con-
trary, that she never had with the queen
any connection whatever, of any sort, at
any time. The queen never even saw her.
Marie Antoinette wrote on August 22,
1785, to her brother Joseph 11.: * This
adventuress of the lowest class has no place
here, and has never had access to my
presence.' *At the time of the trial,' says
Madame Campan, ' the queen sent for some
of the engravings representing Madame de
La Motte. She never even remembered
seeing her pass through the gallery at
Versailles, which was open to the public,
and where Madame de La Motte often
showed herself.'

What did Rosalie, the countess's maid,
say at the preliminary inquiry ?

' I never heard anybody in the house
speak of any relations between Madame de
La Motte and the queen.'

LIFE OF MADAME DE LA MOTTE 125

What did Mademoiselle Colson, her
companion, say?

' I spent two years with Madame de La
Motte' (at the very time of the Necklace
intrigue) * and never saw or heard anything
to lead me to infer that there were relations
between the queen and the countess.'

What did Marie Anne de Saint-Remy,
Jeanne's sister, declare to the Abbe Bew,
who sent her to his cousin Bew the book-
seller in London, the publisher of Madame
de La Motte's Memoirs ?

* Yes, sir, my sister herself told me that
the letters in her Memoirs were forged, and
that the greater part of the book was false.
And for myself, sir, I confidently affirm that
my sister never had an interview with the
queen, and that the whole story is absurd.'

And what did Madame de La Motte
herself declare, in her letters and cross-
examination, and in the memorials she got
her advocate to draw up .-^ * I never had

126 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

the honour of seeing the queen.' ' I never
flattered myself on having any credit with
the queen/ ' I know nobody who was in
the queen's suite.' * The Dame de La
Motte,' said her advocate Maitre Doillot,
* in spite of a name everywhere recognised,
was not known at court, and had no
relations, public or private, with the
sovereign.' And further: * Is there any
need to speak of another fable, that inter-
course with the queen of which Madame
de La Motte is said to have boasted as of
a secret correspondence ? The countess
would be highly culpable if the allegation
were true, since it is an honour she never
had. She humbly beseeches her judges
attentively to listen to the reading of the
depositions in regard to this fable, and to
mark with special attention the firm tone in
which she has denied it'

After such a mass of corroborative testi-
mony, can the least doubt still remain ?

LIFE OF MADAME DE LA MOTTE 127

The appearance of the Memoirs had for
its first result the loss of the protection and
the subsidies of the English lord, who had
poured out his heart and his purse at the
knees of this poor martyr of the French
courts. He was, it appears, a man of good
sense, and the victim of the judicial error
appeared to him thenceforth less inter-
esting.

After breaking with the lord, she quar-
relled with Calonne. There was an exciting
scene. The two lovers were playing at
piquet. After a decisive stroke the
ex-minister cried, * Madame, you are
marked ! ' The unintentional allusion cut
like a knife. The countess had a hasty
temper. Quick as lightning, she over-
turned the table, dashed at her partner,
and then, * with the fair hands which hither-
to had only stroked the face of the old
beau,' she left some deep marks of her fury.

The Count de La Motte had had enough

128 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

of it. He took advantage of the disorders
following on the events of the 14th of July
to desert his wife and return to Paris. He
arrived there on August 18, 1789. From
that day, the correspondence of Madame
de La Motte with her husband and sister,
the latter in retirement at the Abbey of
Jarcy, furnishes most valuable information.

Marie Anne de Remy, described as a
buxom creature, fair, dull, sweet-tempered
and indolent, was in every respect the
opposite of her sister. When, on June 2,

1786, she heard of her sister's condemnation,
in her grief she swallowed a phial of poison.
The Abbess of Jarcy administered remedies
for twelve hours in succession, while the
young woman was contorted with frightful
pain. She recovered, and on September 20,

1787, the Abbe Pfaff wrote to the Countess
de La Motte in London about her : —

*When you ask your sister for help, I
see that you are ignorant of her sad con-

LIFE OF MADAME DE LA MOTTE 129

dition. Her state of health is worse than
death. The different poisons she has
swallowed on as many as four occasions
since June 2 last year, and especially on
that day, owing to her despair about you,
have led to such a state of continual suffer-
ing and depression of spirits that it is
impossible to imagine a condition more
grievous and pitiable. And in addition she
continues to be in great want.' All she
had to live on was her pension of 800 livres.
After the condemnation of Madame de La
Motte, Louis xvi. increased it by 2700 livres
from the privy purse.

The letters addressed by Marie Anne to
her sister Jeanne from the moment when
the latter, deserted by her husband, re-
mained alone in London, in abject poverty,
are quite touching.

'Your husband,' she wrote early in
December 1789, 'has left you in distress.
He is in Paris, where he is said to be

I

130 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

telling the most shameful tales about you.
Poor thing! These are the people, with
their bad company and their evil counsels,
who have ruined you ! The Memoirs they
are ascribing to you, which your husband
has put your name to without putting his
own, so that he can disown them and let
you bear the odium, have done you much
harm. Many people who, like myself, be-
lieved you to be innocent, as you assured
me you were in the Bastille, have been
astonished at these Memoirs, I can't
believe my sister capable of the horrors
they contain, for they contain horrible
things against my father, and are full of
lies.' She adds that she intends to leave
France, and pleads with Jeanne to come with
her. Madame de La Motte had informed
her that she was working at some fresh
writings, at a long narrative in which she
would unfold the whole story of her life,
and which would make a sensation.

LIFE OF MADAME DE LA MOTTE 131

* You say in your letter that you are
writing your life. Alas! what good will
that be ? It is said you are only doing all
this to gain money. Is that how a Valois
should try to regain public esteem ? '

Marie Anne ended with an entreaty :
* Listen to the voice of honour and truth.
Don't reject what I say. It is the heart
that speaks to you, the only heart still left
to you, which tells you that silence is
better than all these memoirs in which you
are ruining yourself. If you will return to
your better mind and follow my advice,
you will find in your sister a true friend,
who only wishes your good, and will gladly
share with you all that she has. And I
would suggest that we should finish our
days together, and retire to Switzerland or
Italy, or to some German principality, where
we should be happy and free and, above
all, unknown. With my little fortune, we
shall be able to live very decently in the

132 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

countries where life is cheap. Alas ! my
poor dear, how I wish this plan might please
you ! I would give everything in the world
for that to be, and I should be happy to
have my sister with me, recovered from
her errors, and to live together till death.'

Madame de La Motte replied with a
reference to the Almighty, and Marie
Anne, from her bed, where she was kept
by her weakness and anxiety, wrote again
on December 15, 1789 : —

* I have just received your beautiful and
godly letter, which did not surprise me,
because I have never doubted your good
feelings so long as you are away from bad
company : but I am surprised by your con-
fession that you really have published the
Memoirs, whereby you show yourself so very
culpable and forgetful of the God you have
to-day so often at the point of your pen.'
She goes on to speak of the evil reports

LIFE OF MADAME DE LA MOTTE 133

La Motte is spreading about his wife in
Paris. He is leading a gay life at the
Palais Royal, in a very expensive suite on
the second floor.

* I hope your distress may not be worse
than his,' says Marie Anne. 'Poor thing!
In spite of your approval of him, I can't
bring myself to pardon the principal author
of my poor sister's troubles. I might also
invoke the name of God, like you, and,
without probing deeper into this dreadful
business, tell you constantly that God is
good and merciful, that you must- hope in
His loving-kindness, and that He will not
refuse His favour to the submissive and
repentant child, as you say so well. Well,
my sister, why, with such beautiful religious
sentiments, why want always to set people
talking about you, by all these writings,
which will end in ruining you before God
and men ? With true repentance you may
yet hope, as you say, to be pitied and

134 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

respected ; but, I tell you, you will not do
it by these Memoirs. I am your sister and
friend, don't spurn my advice; and since
you tell me I am your consolation, and
I ask nothing better than to help to make
you happy, it all depends on yourself. I
would give my life to succeed in this, my
dear sister. Renounce, I beseech you,
these dreadful memoirs of yours.

* I am much disappointed to see that you
do not approve my suggestion that we
should spend the remainder of our days
together — since you do not answer on that
point. Alone, in a free country, where we
were unknown, we could live respectably.
I confess that, though I repeat the sug-
gestion, I fear you will still oppose it. How-
ever, I don't want to force your inclinations.
What I say to you is said at the dictation
of love and honour, and unhappily you do
not always understand what those words
mean. But I shall never reproach you.

LIFE OF MADAME DE LA MOTTE 135

Let us bury the past ! But the present
should guide our future course. I blame
nobody but the wretches who have led you
so deep into wrong-doing. I should be
overwhelmed with joy if my sister at last
recognised my affection and had some
confidence in her only friend.

* Poor sister ! Remember once for all
that your greatest enemy now is yourself,
and that your one friend is myself, offering
you everything I have !

* It is said that the city will soon resume
its payments, and I shall get my eighteen
months' arrears. Then I will send you some-
thing, and you will rejoin me, or I will
come to you if you like, and we will retire
to some spot where we can still live and be
happy, if you will but try.

'Good-bye, good-bye. I send my best
love.'

And what did Madame de La Motte
reply to these words, sprung from so real

136 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

a feeling, so sincere an affection ? We
have none of her letters to Marie Anne,
but we have those she wrote to her hus-
band. In these she shows herself as she
was ; we see her at last in her true
colours.

* I was in such haste to catch the post,'
she wrote on January ii, 1790, 'that I had
no time to give you any details concerning
the moissonneuse^ (thus she calls her sister).
* I have received only two letters from her '
(the two we have just read). ' In the first
she suggests that we should spend our last
days together, in Switzerland or Italy where
living is cheap ; says she would be happy
if I approved her scheme ; but advises me
to stop publishing memoirs, and says she
wants to know how I am placed, so that
she can help me. She tells me that people
in Paris are saying you have deserted me,
and a hundred other horrors. As I know

1 Properly a reaper, harvester.

LIFE OF MADAME DE LA MOTTE 137

these precious humbugs, I don't care a rap
for them. And so I have made a very
brief reply, and asked nothing for myself,
but only ten guineas for that monster
Angelique.'

The ' monster Angelique ' was the girl
who while a prisoner in the Salp^triere had
devoted herself to the countess's service.
Like Marianne, the companion of Madame
de La Motte's flight, she had joined the
countess in England. Both had taken
service with her. But as the lady did not
pay them their wages, and they were
scandalised at what went on in the house,
they had left her. And Angelique was
demanding her wages so that she might
return to France.

* A second letter,' continues Madame de
La Motte, 'arrived on December 15 : dzs-
graceful. '

This is the letter we have just transcribed;
the word disgraceful is underlined.

138 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

' A hundred more offers, to be fulfilled
only on one condition : that there are no
more memoirs. In short, she treats me
horribly badly. And you are the hero of
the business ; fancy, you are the sole author
of it all ; and so she runs on with expres-
sions worthy of such a pair of knaves ' (her
sister, and the abbe Pfaff, who pitied her
condition and was trying to do something
for her). * Accustomed to deceive every-
body, they are really working for my
enemies, as I have told them.'

She goes on to say that the abbe had
come to see her in London.

' He came on Sunday, December 27, at
five in the afternoon. He embraced me
— his breath stank like the plague — and
shook hands in English fashion. He re-
mained till ten o'clock, and came again next
day.

' The same impudent rogue, seeing that I
abused my sister so roundly in regard to all

LIFE OF MADAME DE LA MOTTE 139

the money she enjoys since my misfortunes,
and that it Httle becomes her, in making
offers, to add conditions to them, when
everything she has is mine ; he answered
that that was not true, that it was the king
who had given it to her. But the king has
only given what belongs to us. She has an
income of 3200 livres, which are certainly
the 35,000 livres from the Bastille.'

(Louis XVI. had indeed thought at first
of giving the 30,000 — not 35,000 — livres,
which the stolen Necklace had produced, to
Marie Anne; but the Cardinal de Rohan
having opposed the plan, he had given her
a pension of 2700 livres from his privy
purse.)

'And this monster,' continues Madame
de La Motte, speaking of Marie Anne, 'has
had the heart not to come to her sister's
help, but is supporting a rogue. Ah ! he '
(the abbe Pfaff) * is costing her dear ! He
told me they had three children ; and that

140 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

they were paying 800 livres for their rooms.
He occupies the back and she the front.
He goes to her as soon as the servants
are in bed, through a passage under the
staircase, which leads to a Httle room
belonging to the moissonneuse near her
bedroom.'

It is unnecessary to remark that all these
details are the product of Madame de La
Motte's imagination. She went out of her
way to spread these stories and to write
them for every one to read.

And she had found a means to pro-
cure the money she so badly needed. ' I
shall send to my sister's,' she wrote to her
husband, 'to get her desk opened and to
steal 9500 livres.'

This curious letter, so useful in fixing
Madame de La Motte's character, is valu-
able too for the lines with which it closes.
No further proof, to be sure, is required

LIFE OF MADAME DE LA MOTTE 141

that Jeanne stole and broke up the Neck-
lace. The accumulation of facts is over-
whelming. But it is interesting to have a
formal confession from her own hand. In
the Memoirs compiled and published by
herself we read : —

The cardinal's line of defence bore only on the
alleged eagerness of M. de La Motte to carry off,
not only his diamonds, but also mine, with our
silver plate, lace, and all the valuable things we
had ; ought not Madame de Surmont to have de-
clared (Madame de Surmontwas M. de La Motte's
aunt, who had years ago taken Jeanne de Valois
into her house at Bar-sur-Aube) that it was false
that M. de La Motte had carried off those things
with the idea of taking flight, since he had in-
trusted them to her safe keeping ?

And further, in her letter of January 11,
1790, to her husband, Madame de La Motte
writes : —

And don't forget that jade Madame de Sur-
mont. For she, my love, she is the cause of our
misfortunes. Don't spare her, for God's sake !

142 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

If I only could, I don't know what I wouldn't do
to her. Remember that if she had only given up
our diamonds at the proper time, what would
there have been to condemn us ?

The diamonds handed over by Madame
de Surmont w^ere shown to Jeanne de
Valois in the Bastille. In his still un-
published Memoirs, the Count de La Motte
writes : —

These earrings (jewels taken in exchange in
London by La Motte for the diamonds of the
Necklace) had remained at Bar-sur-Aube, with
various other things, as well as all the jewels
and diamonds belonging to Madame de La Motte
and me. All these things were shown to Madame
de La Motte when she was examined and cross-
examined.

The correspondence of Jeanne and her
husband went on. She remarks on her
sadness and her constantly increasing
poverty. ' Sorrow is incessantly crushing
me, reducing me to a skeleton.' Again :

LIFE OF MADAME DE LA MOTTE 143

* I am very ill, my love, the bile is torturing
me and sorrow eating my heart out; but
courage still keeps me alive, the hope of
conquering my enemies still sustains me.'
The count appears in no better plight, but
Jeanne roughly stirs him up : * O my love,
drop all that weak talk about blowing
out your brains. Really, you are a dis-
grace to your sex.' He must live, and she
gives him the reason : * Live, I tell you.
For myself, I 'd rather become a servant
than give my enemies pleasure by dying.'

144 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

X

THE PAMPHLETS

It was about this time, towards the end of
1789, that two violent booklets appeared,
written by Jeanne de Valois, or at any rate
issued in her name. They made a great sensa-
tion. These were her Letter to the Queen
of France and her Petition to the Nation
and the National Assembly for the Revision
of her Trial. 'Odious, traitorous woman,'
she wrote to Marie Antoinette, 'listen,
and read me, if you can, without trembling.
Ah, how you must blush, you who have
been so long familiar with crime and shame.
. . . 'Tis from the depths of the dark abyss,
whither I have fled for shelter from your
rage, that I address to you the utterance of

THE PAMPHLETS 145

a heart weighed down by grief.' There
is no need to quote further. To the nation
and the Assembly Jeanne said : ' It is come,
that moment so much desired, that moment
for which I would have given a thousand
lives ! . . . Yes, Frenchmen, whatever
your love of liberty may be, my soul can
still challenge yours. You have not, like
me, suffered the tortures of Despotism after
having felt its perfidious caresses. . . .
Tremble, ye villains ; I am about to appear
in the arena. And I will cause to appear
with me her (the queen) who has so in-
famously sacrificed me.'

Jeanne was in fact getting ready to serve
up for Marie Antoinette, and all her enemies,
real or imaginary, a new dish of her own
invention. This was the Story of My
Life, the great work in which all who had
not behaved as she would have wished
were about to be vilified in her most ac-
complished style. Bew the bookseller

K

146 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

hoped to create a great scandal. He ad-
vanced two hundred and fifty pounds on
receiving the manuscript. Two editions,
one in French, the other in English, both
illustrated, were to appear simultaneously.

Meanwhile the Revolution was progress-
ing. * I know,' wrote Madame de La Motte
to her husband on December 14, 1790,
'that there are many journals in Paris
speaking in my favour.' And she adds,
in her curious style, so incorrect, but
singularly expressive : * After a certain fine
character that we got put a month ago into
the papers for the queen, I don't doubt
there 'd be some one who, for a fortune,
would desire that I should disavow that she
is the dark original, so as to win back for
her the affection of the people ; but on my
life, for all the crowns in the world, I shall
not disavow what I have said of her, and
if she is only white through me, she will
be all her life as black as the chimney.'

♦

J- iujsle veritable pke Ducheine, fouu

GRANDE VISITE

D E

MADAME LAMOTTE

A U

PERE DUCHESNE.

M A L A D E,

SON tTONNEMENT D£ TROUVSR AUPRts
DE SON LIT UN BROC DE VIN POUI.

pri.sANNE. Grand malheur. qui leur.
ARRIVE. Description de sa chambre.

M

ADAME Lamdtte douee de ce caraftere
renfible, qui eft ordinairemcnt }e partage des
fenimes galanfes , fut tr^s-fachee de I'accideut

THE GRANDE VISITE DE MME. DE LA MOTTE
AU PERE DUCHESNE MALADE

Of THE

UNIVERSITY

OF

THE PAMPHLETS 147

And meanwhile Madame is compiling her
book in a manner to command success. * I
am highly flattering the French people,'
she tells the Count de La Motte. And
as a spice of anticlericalism is already an
assured success, she does not fail to write
that 'that ass the abbe Pfaff says of the
French that they love blood.'

In Paris, Jeanne found numerous assis-
tants. Libels poured out one after another,
insulting, infamous, filthy. The Letter of
Madame de La Motte to the French, the
Conversation between M, de Calonne and
Madame de La Motte, the Conference between
Madame de Polignac and Madame de La
Motte, the Address of the Countess de La
Motte- Valois to the National Assembly ; the
Pere Duchesne series : Great Visit of Pere
Duchesne to Madame Lamotte and Great
Visit of Madame Lamotte to Pere Duchesne
while ill, Declaration of Love by Pere
Duchesne to Madame Lamotte- Valois, The

148 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

book-hawkers read them aloud at the
street- corners, becoming centres of gaping
crowds.

There was a lower descent still. There
appeared the French Messalina, or the
Nights of the Duchesse de Polignac, the
Private, Libertine, and Scandalous Life of
Marie Antoinette, the Nymphomania of
Marie Antoinette, wife of Louis XV L,
Marie Antoinette in trouble, the Last Sighs
of the Tearful Wench, the National B . . .
under the Auspices of the Queen, the Royal
B . , . followed by a Secret Lnterview be-
tween the Queen and the Cardinal de
Rohan, the Presents of the Goddess
Hebe to the Royal Messalina, the Grand
Fite given by the Mongrels of Paris to all
the p ... on the day of the King and Queens
arrival, in joy at the rettcrn of their
Father and Mother, the Rustic Scenes at
Trianon. These filthy pamphlets were in
high vogue ; and copies were sold in con-

THE PAMPHLETS 149

siderable numbers. ' It is amazing,' says
a writer, * to see this impure heap of libels
pursuing the people in the streets, and
spreading our shame over all Europe.'

But the queen found defenders also : the
Reply to the Petition of Jeanne de Valois,
the Resurrection of the Necklace by M,
Lameth and Company, the Captain Tempest
to Jeanne de Valois. Addressing himself to
the countess, the captain said : * I admit
that in a moment of effervescence, when all
the heads of the mob are excited, when all
imaginations are on fire, it is easy for adroit
and powerful villains to capture the minds
of the people by flattering their passions, to
delude them as to their true interests by
covering with flowers the gulf into which
they wish to drag them. I know even
that sometimes their crimes may be bought.
Consult your constituents and you will learn
something of this ; or rather look at this
moment into the depths of your own heart ;

ISO CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

you will find there the great truth I affirm ;
you will see that you are to-day only the
passive instrument of the hate and venge-
ance of a few ambitious men, who need
the resources of your genius to fill up the
measure of their conspiracies.'

REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENTS 151

XI

REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENTS

Around the La Mottes, in fact, an inter-
esting party was disporting itself. The
great revolutionists, Robespierre, Marat,
Hebert, Sergent, Panis, Manuel, were
quick to perceive the capital they might
make of the Necklace affair. They hovered
about the Count de La Motte, ' got him to
reveal all the conduct of the queen, that
audacious woman, who had drawn on her-
self the scorn and hatred of all good
Frenchmen.' In London, the agents of
the Duke of Orleans were trying, on their
part, to win Jeanne de Valois to their side.
The Court was warned of it, and en-
deavoured to ward off the danger. It was

152 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

a curious game. On the king's side it was
led by Mirabeau, whom Louis xvi. had just
won over by means of his privy purse,
though it is fair to say that Mirabeau ap-
pears to have been sincerely indignant at
the intrigue revealed to him. * I know no
infamy, in these times so fertile in villainy,'
writes the Comte de La Marck, ' which
would have disgusted Mirabeau like this
odious machination. It made him boil with
rage, and redoubled his energy. *' I will
snatch this hapless queen from her tor-
mentors," he cried, '* or perish." At this
time Mirabeau threw over all the calcula-
tions that might have preserved his popu-
larity ; and boldly and frankly mounted
into the breach to attack the enemies of the
monarchy.'

His notes for the Court show how deeply
the great orator was then preoccupied with
the intrigues abrewing. * In the days pre-
ceding and following July 14,' he wrote on

REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENTS 153

November 11, 1790, 'and in the days pre-
ceding and following October 5 and 6, the
voice of Madame de La Motte was able by
itself alone to bring about a horrible crime.*
He goes on : 'Is the Duke of Orleans the
sole author of this plot? Is he only the
agent of La Fayette ? Whatever the truth
may be, the Duke of Orleans is not alone,
though he may be in the forefront. La
Fayette has probably not appeared, but the
Sdmonvilles and the Talons have appeared :
it is their doing, the finger-mark of the
worker is plain. Likewise the Lameths
have not appeared ; but they have let fall
hints, perhaps egged on a d'Aiguillon, a
Muguet de Nantes, a Danton ; and they
winked at things rather than actually
brought them about, wishing, whatever
happens, to be in a position to profit. All
these people can be foiled if we only adopt
a firm, rapid, and persistent course. This
horrible plot is only really dangerous as

\^v-=

154 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

long as we are afraid to probe it.' In a
note dated November 12, he continues : ' It
is no longer merely to gratify the public
malignity that the revision of Madame de
La Motte s case is being agitated for ; a
direct attack on the queen is intended, not
to appease a mere feeling of resentment, but
to obtain other successes afterwards when
the first obstacle is surmounted. It would
not be a difficult nor an unlikely thing to
systematise schemes as culpable. Perhaps,
after having disorganised the realm and de-
stroyed all the sources of authority, the heads
of the popular party recognise that they
have much more material for a republic than
for a monarchy ; perhaps they are struck by
the impossibility of re-establishing order
without giving way and retracing their
steps : and, either because shame holds
them back, or because a greater ambition
presents itself to their hopes, they prefer to
change the ancient form of government,

REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENTS 155

which it is almost out of their power now
to consolidate. In this scheme the queen,
whose character, firmness, and clearness
of mind they know, would be the first
object of their attack, both as the first and
the strongest defence of the throne, and as
the sentinel who is most assiduously watch-
ing over the security of the monarch. But
the great art of such ambitious men would
be to conceal their aim. They would wish
to appear to be forced on by events, and
not to direct them. After having made the
La Motte case a destructive poison to the
queen ; after having changed the absurdest
calumnies into legal proofs capable of de-
ceiving the king ; they would raise, one after
another, questions of divorce, regency, the
marriage of kings, the education of the
heir to the throne. In the midst of all
these discussions and all these contests it
would be easy to surround the king with
terrors, to make the burden of the crown

156 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

more and more unendurable, and finally to
reduce his authority to such an empty form
that he would himself abdicate, or agree to
leave, for the rest of his reign, his power in
other hands. The horrible designs I am only
with great regret describing here, certainly
do not exceed the bounds of human wicked-
ness ; in this respect alone the La Motte
affair would be formidable, because it would
form part of a veritable conspiracy.'^

This remarkable page was well worth
quoting in its entirety. Mirabeau con-
cludes : ' If the woman La Motte is not
arrested within a couple of days, you will

^ It is very curious to compare this note of Mirabeau
with the following passage from the J^ep/j/ to the Petition of
Jeanne de La Motte, an anonymous pamphlet published at
this time : ' The party making use of you will betray them-
selves by their madness. This is what they will do : they
will demand from the National Assembly a divorce, and
couple this demand with the insults dictated to you against
the queen. They want to induce the people and the
capital, which they hope to cajole with talk of justice and
vengeance, to ask the king to separate for ever from the
mother of his children, and to abandon her to their rage.'

REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENTS 157

have to change your procedure, confine
yourselves to keeping an eye on her, find-
ing out her plans, her connections, her
resources, her hopes, without having her
arrested, so as to avoid scandal. It would
be possible, with some ingenuity, to deceive
this woman, crafty as she may be, by offer-
ing her protection and defenders whom she
would not think of mistrusting.'

Mirabeau's plan was adopted and put
into execution by Louis xvi.'s expiring
government with surprising ability and
success. Montmorin, the only minister left
who remained favourable to the king, had
succeeded in circumventing the Count de
La Motte to such an extent that the Count
had accepted as his consulting barrister the
head of the royal secret police, the advocate
Jacques Claude Martin Marivaux, who was
afterwards condemned to death by the
revolutionary tribunal for performing the
functions assigned to him at this time.

158 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

' M. de La Motte has returned to Paris,'
we read in Duquesnoy's Journal, under
1790. ' He has come to renew his attacks
on the queen. Happily he has addressed
himself to very prudent folk, who are labour-
ing to hinder his proceedings. There is
reason to believe they will succeed.' La
Motte swore by Marivaux.

Another revolutionary group — Lameth,
Barnave, d'Aiguillon, Menou — circled round
the Jew Bassenge, to whom the Cardinal
de Rohan was debtor for the Necklace.
They invited him to dinner, and commiser-
ated an honest merchant on being the un-
fortunate victim of a cruel court intrigue.
They hinted that the day of justice was at
length about to dawn, and that the scale
would not incline in favour of kings. They
marked out his course, exhorting him to
present a petition to the Jacobins to per-
suade the National Assembly to clear him

REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENTS 159

in the eyes of the nation. But how was
the nation concerned in a purely private
matter? In this way. The abbey of Saint-
Vaast, once belonging to the Cardinal de
Rohan, and now part of the national pro-
perty, could no longer be subject to the
temporary mortgage assigned by the royal
order to Bassenge. His claim was sacred,
and became one of the king's obligations, an
obligation which, like the rest, ought to be
placed under the guardianship of the nation.
A memorial was drawn up by Tavernier.
Menou persuaded his companions to intro-
duce additional phrases against the queen.
* It was proposed,' writes the Count de La
Marck to Mercy- Argenteau, * to present
this petition to the National Assembly, not
to make the nation pay Bassenge — every
one knows that is impossible — but to lead
to a discussion in which it will be main-
tained that the Necklace ought to be paid
for out of the civil list, which is only an-

i6o CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

other way of having the case retried. ' The
jewellers Bohmer and Bassenge considered
the proposition ; but this important way of
going to work scared them ; they would
have preferred a more discreet method, and
they sent to the royal court the following
note, the terms of which should be noticed :
' People who are at the present time enjoy-
ing a certain credit are apparently interest-
ing themselves in Bohmer and Bassenge.
They flatter them that they are about to be
rescued from the extraordinary situation in
which they find themselves, and paid in full.
But Bohmer and Bassenge fear that their
patrons are only wanting to serve them at
the expense of a name for which they have
the greatest veneration, and they will only
put themselves in the hands of those now
courting them after having exhausted all
other means.'

The court learnt through its agents that

REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENTS i6i

Jeanne was working in London at a fresh
pamphlet, more spiteful and scandalous than
the first. ' You may tell your advocate/
she wrote to her husband, * that my Lt/e
will before long be given to the public. If
I read it to him, he would himself see what
a thunderbolt this work will launch at the
heads of the monsters, the authors of my
disgrace.' Jeanne de Valois, however, would
be only too glad to avoid this scandal if the
court would find the right means of per-
suasion. ' Since the time when, by a sort
of miracle,' she wrote herself, 'I set foot
on this foreign land, where freedom smiles
upon misfortune, I have done all I could to
induce Her Majesty to believe that I was in
possession of a correspondence the publica-
tion of which would have the double effect
of compromising her and minimising my
faults. In each of my letters I repeated
that *' since it had pleased Providence that
I should survive that multitude of horrors ;

L

i62 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

since it had saved me from my own rages ;
its intention was clearly that I should not
perish for lack of the means of subsistence ;
that, in the plight to which I am reduced, I
might at least hope that the queen would
have restored to me what the confiscation
of my goods and effects had poured into the
coffers of the king." '

Meanwhile, to her husband, who under
Marivaux' influence was insisting that she
should defer the printing of her new pam-
phlet, she wrote at once : * You desire, my
dear, that I shall not write my Life, or
publish it, for fear of offending the govern-
ment : learn to follow the advice of your
defender, but try to understand also that
I don't know why you are so much afraid.
I am not speaking against anybody, and
besides, this point, I am tired of telling you,
doesn't concern you. I have much affection
for you, but in this matter I shall follow
my own inclination/

REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENTS 163

Marivaux considered that the surest
means of stopping the pubHcation was to
have Jeanne de Valois at Paris within
reach. La Motte wrote asking her to
come, insisting on it. The negotiations
for the purchase by the court of the new
pamphlet would be much easier there.
Madame de La Motte hesitated. What
about the Salpetriere ? ' What strikes me
very forcibly,' she answered, ' is that if it
is true that some person of rank is bent on
my silence, for the tranquillity of Toinette,
why don't they come where I am and make
the proper arrangements with me ? Why
is my presence in Paris so much desired.'^
The Salpetriere has not been destroyed ;
consequently they might throw me again
into their loathsome holes.'

Since she refused to go to France,
Marivaux decided that some one should go
to her, and keep watch upon her in London,
as her husband was being watched in

i64 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

Paris. He sought the aid of Dubu de
Longchamp, general administrator of the
post-office, whom she had once met at the
house of one Mortsange, and who wrote
to her on June 2, 1791, pretending to share
and to approve her fears and mistrust : —

* You have been urged to come to Paris
at this time. I am not at all in favour
of your coming. You must wait till M.
de La Motte's affairs are settled, till your
husband's hopes are changed into certainties.
He is opposed to a scandal which would be
dangerous without being useful. Follow
his example, madam. Give up all hope
of vengeance for the firm resolve to rest
your weary head on a peaceful and stable
soil. The time of illusions must be past.
The time of sorrow is sure to spend itself.
Devoted as I am to the relief of the un-
fortunate, I shall regard it as delightful,
madam, to be useful to M. de La Motte
and yourself.'

THE END OF JEANNE DE VALOIS 165

XII

THE END OF JEANNE DE VALOIS

On June 10, 1791, an agent of Dubu de
Longchamp named Bertrand left Calais,
to assume the office of watchdog over
Madame de La Motte, and to take care that
the agents of the revolutionist factions, of
Marat, Robespierre and Lameth, and of the
Duke of Orleans, did not approach her.
He arrived on the 13th. A horrible drama
had just been enacted. As the result of
proceedings taken against her by a creditor,
an upholsterer named Mackenzie, Madame
de La Motte was suddenly visited by a
number of constables. In her half-frantic
state, the vision of her past crimes and
punishments rose suddenly before her mind :

i66 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

the horrible punishment before the steps of
the Palais de Justice, the shameful letters
burnt into her smoking flesh, the cells of
the Salpetriere ; and, with a movement of
terror, as though impelled by the force
of Fate, she had opened the window, and
flung herself down from the second story
on to the pavement. Unconscious, with
mangled limbs, she had been picked up
by a perfumer named Warren, who lived
opposite Lambeth Street, near Westminster
Bridge.

*When I entered her room,' wrote
Bertrand to Dubu on June 13, 1791,
* she began to work on my feelings. She
lifted the bedclothes so that I might see
her injuries. There was never seen any-
thing so horrible. Her thigh is broken
about the middle, one leg is broken at the
knee, and both are in splints. Deposits
of purulent matter are forming, and the
surgeon was obliged to make incisions in

THE END OF JEANNE DE VALOIS 167

order to allow suppuration. Her whole
body is dark yellow in colour, from head
to foot.' She was in the deepest want,
having absolutely nothing to live on.
Eighteen months before she had received
one hundred and seventy guineas in advance
for her new Memoirs, on which she had
supported life since. She was now wholly
dependent on the charity of Mr. Warren,
and that was beginning to wear out.

Her condition grew worse and worse.
*A whitish spot,' wrote Bertrand on June
21, 'has appeared on the thigh. After a
poultice, a considerable swelling formed,
which burst and flooded her thigh with
pus of a disgusting odour, and the matter
was so abundant that five saucerfuls of it
were thrown away. When I went in, the
smell was unendurable, though a lot of
brown paper had been burnt and all the
windows were open.'

Warren the perfumer was a decent man,

i68 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

but a little hardhearted. He reckoned
that the sick woman was costing him a
good deal of money, and began to be afraid
that it would never be reimbursed. ' When
all is said and done,' he wrote to Dubu de
Longchamp, ' I haven't the means to con-
tinue supporting her. To me, the duties of
a husband and father come before those
of friendship.' He asked Jeanne roughly
on her bed of suffering what had become
of her husband and the fine friends of
whom she was always talking, but none
of whom appeared. 'This Bertrand,' he
said, * who never leaves your bedside, is
one of your old lovers.' He reproached
her with the linen she was soiling, and
refused to pay the nurse attending her.

In Paris, events were hurrying on. The
general restlessness was extreme. Bertrand
received no news from Dubu de Long-
champ. * The sick woman,' he wrote,
* would like to have some assistance, being

THE END OF JEANNE DE VALOIS 169

absolutely destitute. I do all that I can
to persuade her that her affairs are in the
best possible condition ; but she is as much
astonished as I am at getting no news/

Bertrand's mission was not merely to
keep an eye on Madame de La Motte, but
to prevent the appearance of her book,
The Life of Jeanne de Saint-Rdmy de
Valois, Countess de La Motte. Six thousand
copies had been printed, of which four
thousand were for the booksellers of Paris,
and a thousand for those of London and
Holland ; while a thousand copies of an
English translation had also been printed.
Bertrand opened negotiations. The publica-
tion, though announced in the London
journals, was delayed. Madame de La
Motte, who was to have signed every
copy, put it off from day to day under
pressure from Bertrand, who announced
that money was being sent to her. But
the money did not come.

170 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

Meanwhile Warren was worrying the
patient. There were unpleasant scenes,
and she wept bitterly. ' It is easily seen,'
observes Bertrand, ' that it is only the fear
of losing what she owes him that keeps him
at all civil.'

' I had yesterday with the patient,' wrote
the correspondent of Dubu de Longchamp
on July 29, ' a scene for which my courage
was not prepared. I will tone down its
deplorable colours for you. She told me
that she was quite convinced I had only
come to London to make her perish in the
most outrageous manner; that it was to
take from her her hard-earned bread that
we had thought of delaying the publication
of her work, which was her only means of
subsistence ; that she would have gladly
pardoned me if I had plunged a knife into
her heart ; that all that was left to her,
after revenging herself on you and me, was
to end her unhappy existence as promptly

THE END OF JEANNE DE VALOIS 171

as possible. I believe that if her strength
had permitted, she would have accomplished
so cruel a design. ''Judge yourself," she
said to me, "how much faith I should
repose in your lies. I will sign to-morrow
the copies of my book, and don't be
offended if I take all necessary measures
to secure compensation for your perfidy,
and for the lamentable plight in which
the delay in the appearance of my work,
due to you, has thrown me."

* I let her have her say out,' adds
Bertrand. * I let her cries and tears pass
in silence. The fever came upon her at
that moment, with a dreadful shivering.
This is only a slight sketch of this over-
powering scene.'

From that moment the poor woman's
state grew rapidly worse. On August 5
Bertrand wrote, * The patient is nearing the
end.'

Jeanne de Saint -R6my de Valois,

172 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

Countess de La Motte, died on Tuesday,
August 23, 1 79 1, at eleven o'clock in the
evening, in frightful anguish. The night
before, she had been seized with vomitings
and convulsions, which never left her till
the end. She was buried on August 26,
in the churchyard of St Mary's, Lambeth. ^

Warren wrote at once to the Count de
La Motte announcing the sad event. A
few friends accompanied the coffin. ' I
had her buried in Lambeth church, and
reserved the right for her friends, if they
are disposed to take advantage of it, to
erect a monument over the remains of the
most affectionate wife, sister, and friend that
ever lived.'

^ On page 2009 of the parish register the name is given
as ' Jean Saint-Rymer de Valois, Countesse de La Motte.'
' Madame de La Motte died on Tuesday after suffering a
martyrdom. She is buried to-day.' (Note of August
26, 1 791, signed W. Harris, to Dubu de Longchamp.
Archives nationales^ F. 7/4445.) The Courrier de P Europe,
published in London, announced her death on the same
day, August 26, as also did the London Chronicle.

THE END OF JEANNE DE VALOIS 173

The Count de La Motte made no reply.
Warren wrote a second time, detailing the
expenses he had incurred. The count was
less likely to reply than ever. Warren re-
presented to him that he was not behaving
like a gentleman. And still La Motte
answered nothing.

The unfortunate Bertrand had left London
before the death of the countess. To Dubu
de Longchamp, who had intrusted him with
the mission he had carried out in London,
he wrote : * I leave this evening, August 1 9.
I have the honour to ask you to send me
some money to the poste restante at Calais.
You will prolong my wretched existence.
God knows, if you don't send me the means
of returning, I shall have to beg my bread
on the highway. My soul is grievously
disturbed, as my wife can do nothing for
me. I am leaving, trusting to Providence.'

174 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

XIII

THE HALL OF VENUS

The Life of Jeanne de Saint-Rdmy de Valois,
the publication of which had occupied and
tormented the poor woman to the hour of
death, and to which she had owed her last
resources, was sent from London to the
bookseller Gueffiier, on the Quai des
Augustins in Paris. After having read the
story of her lamentable end, he was still
more saddened to set eyes on this dreadful
pamphlet. The theme of it was as follows :
Marie Antoinette had conceived an affec-
tion for her cousin, Jeanne de Valois, from
the day when she saw her faint under her
windows. She had made her the con-
fidante of her most secret thoughts. That

THE HALL OF VENUS 175

was how it was that Jeanne had become
the intermediary between her and the
Cardinal de Rohan, the Iris messenger of
their amours. The meetings took place
at night, between eleven and midnight, at
Trianon, in the hall of Venus, which
Madame de La Motte thus describes : ' An
elegant apartment, round in form, sur-
mounted by a dome, is situated in the
gardens of Petit-Trianon, on an eminence
which you reach by a gentle slope. The
building is surrounded by a moat, which
the cardinal and myself used to cross by
means of a plank thrown over it for that
purpose. In the middle of the room stood
a pedestal of white marble, a superb statue
representing Apollo or Venus. In the
corners are other statues — these are Cupids
and Graces. The doors are of glass. You
descend from the hall to the gardens by
four marble steps. At the windows are
curtains of the finest damask, spotted with

176 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

embroidered flowers. There are tapestries,
arm-chairs, sofas.'

To that spot, when the king happened
to be hunting at Rambouillet, Jeanne used
to lead the cardinal to the queen, who
awaited him on a couch.

Criticism, studying the Life of Jeanne de
Saint-Rdmy, has remarked that no hall
existed at Trianon called the hall of
Venus, no apartment resembling even dis-
tantly the description given by Madame
de La Motte. During the winter of 1784,
when these meetings were said to have
taken place, Marie Antoinette never went
to Trianon. On the days mentioned, the
king was not hunting at Rambouillet. We
have a journal in Louis xvi.'s own hand,
in which all his movements are precisely
recorded. Is there any need to dwell on
the point? The book ends with a series
of letters in which the queen and the
cardinal tell each other of their love. Will

THE HALL OF VENUS 177

any one venture to maintain that these
letters are authentic ?

The court succeeded in having the books
seized. The Count de La Motte himself
revealed where they were warehoused.
* Without compromising anything,' he wrote
to the king on May 5, 1792, ' I could claim
and get from the hands of the malevolent
the weapon they wish to make- use of
to-day in furtherance of their projects.'
Laporte, controller of the civil list, bought
the complete edition for 14,000 livres
from the king's own funds. On May 26,
1792, he had them thrown into the furnace
at the Sevres porcelain manufactory, tied
up in thirty bundles. They were burning
for five hours. Everything was consumed.
The municipal officers at once informed
the National Assembly, and the Pere
Duchesne began to fulminate against the
intrigues of the court. Laporte was sum-
moned to the bar of the Assembly. It j

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1/8 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

was declared that he had destroyed in
the Sevres furnace the correspondence of
Marie Antoinette with enemies of the state,
and packets of false notes she had had
made in London. Soon afterwards, a copy
of the book, found at Laporte's house, was
taken to the offices of the Committee of
Surveillance, which, composed of strong
'patriots,' at once got the work reprinted
and put on sale at Garnery's. In these
days no respectable man could read its
pages without a feeling of nausea; but
at that time, men's passions seasoned it
with the spice necessary to permit its
digestion. In the Hall of Venus, adorned
with Cupids and Graces, behind the flower-
embroidered curtains, on a sofa of figured
silk inwoven with fine gold, the skirts of a
Queen of France trailed the floor with the
scarlet folds of a cardinal's robe : what a
treat for the men of that day !

*At that moment,' write the Goncourts,

THE HALL OF VENUS 179

* Madame de La Motte's libel made its
reappearance in France. Montmorin, the
only royalist minister left to Louis, defend-
ing the queen one day in the council ; and
complaining, timidly at first, to Duport
du Tertre of the threats levelled at her,
and of the plot to assassinate her openly
avowed by a considerable party, and ending
by asking his colleague if he would allow
such a crime to be consummated, Duport
coldly replied that he would not counten-
ance an assassination, but that he would
not look with the same disfavour on a trial,
if that were suggested. **What!" cried
Montmorin, ''you, a minister of the king,
would consent to such an infamy ? " ** But
what if there is no other means ? " returned
the keeper of the seals.'

The opportunity sought by Duport was
about to be provided by the Count de La
Motte, who was urging the revision of his
trial. The turn taken by events robbed

i8o CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

the king of his means of action, and the
count escaped the influence of his advisers.
'The course for me to pursue,' he wrote
to Montmorin, ' reduces itself to two very-
simple points: — (i) to place myself in a
position to get a decision on my contumacy ;
(2) to plead for the quashing of the decree
that branded my wife, and to sue the
judges and the minister who used the
secrecy of the Bastille to lead her to her
ruin.'

He wrote to the keeper of the seals :
* A party once powerful, in order to ruin
my wife, more weak than criminal, united
the greatest instruments of despotism — the
Bastille, and the judges in the pay of the
court. The Bastille no longer exists, and
the French people is about to choose judges
who would blush to allow themselves to
be led step by step into the labyrinth of
Themis by an insolent and ferocious vizier.'

Besides, was not special consideration

THE HALL OF VENUS i8i

due to the La Mottes ? ' The sentence by
which we were condemned,' said the count,
'was the signal for the astonishing revolu-
tion which was brought about with so much
facility by the corruption of the court, the
disorder of the finances, and the tyranny
of those who shared the public power.
There is a Providence which delights to
direct the destiny of mortals, and which
causes germs destructive to the power of
tyranny to spring from the blood of the
innocent ! '

The Count de La Motte, however, pru-
dently waited till 1792, when the Revolution
was in full swing, to present himself at
the Conciergerie as a prisoner, in order
to purge himself of his contumacy. He
was incarcerated on January 4. On the
following night, between two and three
o'clock, the prison caught fire. The Pere
Duchesne hastened to inform France that
this was an incendiary feat instigated by

i82 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

the court for the purpose of burning La
Motte and his papers ; and Robespierre,
Hubert, and Manuel hastened up and
rushed into the prison.

* Rest easy for the present/ said Manuel
to the count, ' we are looking after you.'

Jeanne de Valois' husband published in
his turn a memorial in his own defence,
when his case came before the third
tribunal. Meanwhile a revulsion seems
to have taken place in his soul, in which
feelings of this sort found little lodging
as a rule — unless perhaps this too was a
means in his eyes of extorting money.
However that may be, he wrote to the
king on May 5, 1792 : * A cabal, which is
offended at my prudence, would like to
make a dangerous scandal out of this affair.
The Sieur Deplane, president and judge,
was appointed to examine me. His
questions had no other aim than to seek
to compromise the queen, and principally

THE HALL OF VENUS 183

to find some means of bringing her before
the court as a necessary witness to the
facts; and the curious pubHc fell into the
trap.' The case was remitted to the first
court, which, on July 20, 1792, quashed
the sentence of June i, 1786, by which
the Count and Countess de La Motte had
been condemned by the Parlement, * seeing
that,' said the new judgment, ' the indictment^
submitted by the procurator-general to the
quondam Parlement of Paris, on Septem-
ber 7, 1785, is only signed at the end
and not on each leaf, which is contrary to
the law.' Thus the sentence was quashed
for a technical irregularity. La Motte was
again brought before a jury.

Other judges were lying hungrily in wait
for the queen.

i84 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

XIV

THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN

The capture of the Bastille on the four-
teenth of July had opened the door to
popular passion. Taine's idea is profoundly
true : it was the Jacobin conquest. As
scholarship becomes better informed, and its
impartiality increases, the great historian's
conception will be confirmed by fresh proofs.
On October 6, yelling mobs streamed
out of Paris towards Versailles and poured
into the palace ; women, their hair matted
with dust and sweat, screamed for the
'entrails of the queen.' 'Madam, save
the queen ! ' cried one of the guards,
running to one of her waiting-women, his
face stained with blood. Next day the

THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 185

mob dragged the royal family to Paris,
surrounding their slow-going carriages with
ribald jests and obscene insults. On the
driver's seat of the coach In which the
queen sat with her boy, the actor Beaulieu
amused the crowd and scared the occupants
with his mountebank s antics. The queen
sat dry-eyed, silent, immoveable, seemingly
lost in a dream. ' I am hungry, mamma,'
said the little dauphin, and then the tears
came.

The 20th of June 1792 was a repetition
of the October day. The royal family were
at the Tuileries. At half-past four in the
afternoon the cries of the mob enveloped
the palace like rolling thunder. The
National Guards had barely time to hurry
the queen into the council-chamber before
the human flood burst upon them. They
dragged the long table in front of the queen
and her children, whom only three feet of
deal separated from faces crimson with rage

i86 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

and wine, clenched fists, and brandished
pikes. ' The queen stood erect,' write the
brothers De Goncourt, ' with Madame on
her right, pressing close against her. The
dauphin, his eyes wide open in a childish
stare, was on her left. Men, women, pikes,
knives, yells, insults, all poured in one
torrent towards the queen. One of these
cannibals displayed a bundle of switches,
with the legend '' For Marie Antoinette";
another flourished a miniature gibbet with
a doll swinging upon it ; another thrust
forward under the very eyes of the queen,
who did not blench, a dish bearing a mass
of bleeding flesh shaped like a heart.
Some one else flung red caps upon the heads
of the queen and her son. Women all
dishevelled spat their filthy jests in her
face, to be answered in her gentle voice :
"Have you ever seen me? Have I ever
done you any harm ? You are mistaken :
I am a Frenchwoman. I was so happy

THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 187

when you loved me ! " And at this sweet,
sad voice, at this fair, sorrowful face, the
storm was calmed, the fury sank abashed.
Pity softened these hard hearts ; humanity
became itself again. The squalling viragoes
held their peace, and even felt their tears
flow. '*They have had their fill," cried
Santerre, shrugging. And he drew near,
leant upon the table and jeered ; but even
his lips closed, involuntarily, before the
quiet, searching gaze of the queen. To
cover his confusion the man growled :
''Take that child's cap off," pointing to
the dauphin : ''see how hot he is ! " This
was the poor child who, next day, when
the guards were called to arms, asked :
" Mamma, is it yesterday again ? " " They
will murder me," said the queen a little
later : " what will become of my children ? " '
Under the palace windows disgusting
prints were being hawked about, and
pamphlets written against her in mud from

i88 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

the gutters. The terrace of the Feuillants
had been thrown open to the people by the
Assembly, and you may be sure they made
good use of it ! From morning to night
the talk there was so horrible that the
queen was twice obliged to withdraw.
Sometimes — such was her spirit — she
wished to descend to the garden and speak
to the people : * I will tell them that I love
them, and that I am a Frenchwoman. Not
love the French! — I, the mother of a
dauphin ! * But her illusions were soon
dispelled : calumny had struck its roots too
deep. What availed the voice of one lonely
woman against the tempest ?

On August lo Louis xvi. and his family,
terrified at the popular rising, took refuge
in the bosom of the Assembly. ' I have
come here,' said the king, 'to prevent a
great crime.' He placed himself at the
president's left, and Marie Antoinette had
made the dauphin sit by her side. * Some

THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 189

one take him up to the president,' cried a
voice : * he belongs to the nation. The
Austrian woman is unworthy of his con-
fidence ! ' And an usher seized the child,
weeping with terror and clinging to his
mother's skirts. In the night the king and
queen proceeded to the Feuillants. By the
light of candles stuck on the muzzles of
muskets, their feeble rays glinting on the
blood-stained steel of pikes, the queen
walked slowly between the close ranks of
the crowd, whence rose the refrain —

' Madame Veto avait promis
De'faire ^gorger tout Paris.'

The sentinels had much ado to hold the
throng back. When one of the queen's
women appeared at the door of the cells
of the ancient convent, which had been
hastily furnished, she was driven back by
yells. Beneath the windows arose cries of
' Death to the queen ! ' * Every time that I

190 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

glanced at this grating,' said a certain
Dufour, * I thought I was at the menagerie
watching the rage of the wild beasts when
some one comes before their bars ! ' Even
when the queen had retired to rest, cries of
* Fling us her head ! ' reached her.

On August 12 the Legislative Assembly,
under the influence of the Jacobins, decided
to leave the Commune of Paris to settle
on the place where the king was to live,
and to arrange the details of his existence.
Marie Antoinette was now in good hands,
forsooth, which were going to take special
care of her.

On August 13, 1792, the queen, with her
husband, her children, Madame Elizabeth,
and the Princess de Lamballe, was trans-
ferred to the smaller tower of the Temple.
But on the 19th two commissioners
from the municipality were ordered to
proceed to the removal of all persons not
belonging to the * Capet family.' Manuel

THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 191

waxed facetious on the embarrassing state
inseparable from royalty. ' I will give you,'
he said, ' some women of my acquaintance
to serve you.' The queen replied that she
needed no one, as she and her sister-in-law
would assist each other.

'Very well, madam,' said the man; 'you
have only to serve yourself : that will save
you the trouble of choosing.'

Attendants were placed over Marie
Antoinette to spy upon her from night
till morning and from morning till night.
* Not a movement, not a word, not a glance,'
say the Goncourts, *but had its witnesses
and informers! Not a moment had she
alone or with her family. There were
always these men playing the spy upon her
eyes, her lips, her silence ! Always these
men, pursuing her even into her bed-
chamber when she slipped away to change
her dress ! Even at night, in the anteroom
where Madame de Lamballe had lately

192 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

slept, the municipal guards kept watch,
and the queen was spied on in her very
slumbers.'

Marseillais had been placed at all the
landings. When the queen ascended from
the garden, they sang gaily —

' Madame a sa tour monte,
Ne salt quand descendra.'

This walk in the garden, which she imposed
on herself for the sake of her children's
health, was a martyrdom. At the foot of
the tower the two gaolers, Risbey and
Rocher, blew the smoke of their pipes in
her face, while the municipal guards, riding
cock-horse on chairs set in a circle, laughed
at the grimaces she made at the smell of
the smoke. They watched the curling
wreaths as they played about her abundant
fair locks. In the garden the soldiers had
orders to wear their hats ostentatiously
before her. The gunners started to dance

THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 193

in a ring, singing the * (^a ira ! ' and the
labourers working at the walls of the
enclosure said openly that they would prefer
to use their tools in breaking her head.

The Commune had given very explicit
instructions. Persons entering the queen's
presence were to keep their hats on. * I
saw in the queen's apartment,' writes
Lepitre, *a stonecutter named Mercereau,
in the filthiest apparel, lying at full length
on a damask sofa where the queen usually
sat, and he justified himself by invoking
the principle of equality. The municipal
guards used systematically to loll in arm-
chairs before the fireplace, resting their feet
on the andirons so as terrender it impossible
for the princesses to warm themselves.'

Lampoons of the most disgusting kind,
slanders, the pamphlets of Boussenard,
the Mdnage royale en d^route, the Tentation
cTAntoine et son cochon, were cried at the foot
of the walls. ' Worst of all these outrages

N

194 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

on the queen was the shameful outrage
which no people nor age had yet ventured
against the modesty of a woman : there was
no lavatory for the princesses except that
of the town guards and the soldiers.'

And yet, while she was with her children
life seemed endurable. She used to be
present at the supper of her son. When it
happened that the guards had gone away
for a moment she hastily, and in a whisper,
made the boy repeat a prayer. Then she put
him to bed, and sat watching him until nine
o'clock. Then the king's supper was served,
and after that she returned to the bedside
of the child till a late hour of the night.

The queen had always been fond of
embroidery, and it formed a distraction for
these long hours. Some one no doubt
noticed that it gave her too much pleasure,
for an order from the municipality put an
end to the needlework. Her embroidery,
said the Commune, concealed a correspond-

THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 195

ence in hieroglyphics. Deprived of her
embroidery, Marie Antoinette devoted
herself to darning, the need of which was
very manifest. The dauphin slept in
tattered sheets ; and she mended the
king's coat while he was in bed.

The queen, like her sister-in-law and her
daughter, was dressed in the morning in
white pique, and their heads were covered
with white lawn. At noon they put on
their only finery : a garment of tulle, with
little flowers on a brown ground.

On September 22 the Republic was
proclaimed. A few days afterwards the
prisoner received some linen that had been
previously ordered for her. The dress-
makers had worked her monogram upon it,
surmounted by the royal crown ; and the
republican government gave themselves the
pleasure of compelling the queen to unpick
with her own hands the crowns embroidered
upon her linen.

196 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

* The queen having been sick and taken
no food,' says Turgy, ' sent to ask me to
have a broth prepared for supper. Just as
I handed it to her, she learned that the
woman Tison— placed in her prison as
wardress — was likewise indisposed. She
ordered the broth to be taken to her. I
then asked one of the guard to take me
to the kitchen to procure another portion.
Not one of them would accompany me.'
The queen, ill as she was, went supperless
to bed.

This woman Tison was a decoy, who
insinuated herself into the queen's confid-
ence only to betray her. Her accusations
brought ruin upon those whose sympathies
were moved by the prisoners' unhappy
plight. But nature had its revenge. One
day the woman fell at the queen's feet,
imploring her pardon. She was frantic
with remorse. She was carried away
screaming to a madhouse. And Marie

THE PRINCESSE DE LAMBALLE.

THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 197

Antoinette, who had learned of her tale-
bearing and its terrible consequences, com-
passionately inquired after her welfare.

The family were at dinner on September
3, when they were interrupted by the noise
to which they were becoming accustomed —
the clamour of the mob. People cried out
for the queen to come to the window. The
unhappy woman was going there when one
of the guard named Menessier suddenly
threw himself in front of her, pushed her
back, and drew the curtains. But Louis
XVI., since his people asked for him, was
ready to appear before them. The curtains
were thrown back. The queen uttered no
cry, she did not faint ; but her eyes were
fixed in a dreadful stare — the wild stare of
a madwoman. At the end of a pike they
were presenting to her the ghastly head
of the Princess de Lamballe. The people
wanted her to embrace her friend for the
last time. *Two individuals,' writes the

198 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

painter Daujon, who chanced to be then at
the foot of the tower, 'were dragging by
the legs a headless body, nude, its back to
the ground, its stomach opened as high as
the breast. At the foot of the tower the
corpse was ostentatiously displayed, and
the limbs were arranged with a sort of art,
and a callousness that opens a wide field
for the meditation of the philosopher.'

The gentle, beautiful Princess de Lam-
balle, who, as we have seen, had in her
tender, thoughtless pity visited Madame
de La Motte at the Salpetriere, had been
massacred with hammers at the moment
when her gaolers liberated her from the
prison of La Force. Her beautiful body
suffered infamous mutilations. The head
was severed from the trunk and borne by
the rabble to a wine-merchant's. It was
placed there upon his counter, with little
glasses ranged all round. The fair ringlets,
matted with blood, fell into the poor glazed

THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 199

staring eyes ; the features were drawn ; the
flesh was wan and flaccid, the skin marked
with green spots of decomposing blood, —
and the light sparkled in the little glasses,
forming a gay aureole with the scintillation
of the golden liquor.

One man had taken the head, another
from the shattered breast had ripped the
heart. This he ate while it was still raw
and throbbing. It was, he said, a dainty, ifu
and delicious morsel. This relish for a
fresh and palpitating heart was so much to
the taste of the day that in the evening
several gallant fellows, in diflerent parts of
the capital, each boasted of having been the
hero of the adventure, and one of them,
to illustrate his story, called admiring at-
tention to his moustaches still red with
blood.

Louis was transferred on September 30
from the small tower to the large tower
of the Temple, and was there joined on

200 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

October 26 by his wife and sister, Madame
Elizabeth.

On the night of January 20, 1793, Madame
heard her mother, who had not undressed,
shaking in her bed all night long from cold
and grief. Louis had just been condemned
to death. Throughout the whole course
of the trial the Convention had refused
to the king the consolation and support
of seeing his wife and children ; but it
shrank from forbidding a last embrace
before the execution. The closing inter-
view was to take place in the dining-room.
The queen entered holding her son by
the hand. She wished to draw the king
towards her own room. 'No,' said the
king, ' I may only see you here.' The
municipal guards stood pressing their faces
against the glass door, filling their eyes
with the sight of ' perhaps the greatest
sorrow,' say the Goncourts, ' with which
God has ever afflicted the gaze of men.'

THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 201

All bent forward : the king was blessing
his wife and sister and children. The
dauphin was lifting up his tiny hand, and
swearing, at his father's bidding, to pardon
those who were putting that father to
death.' Then silence. Nothing was pos-
sible now but sobs.

Before he died the king laid aside his
wedding ring, a seal, and a packet of hair
for his wife. The Convention feared that
objects of this nature in the hands of an
imprisoned woman might compromise the
destiny of the Revolution, and the memorials
of the dead husband were not handed to
his wife. But Toulan, one of the guards,
touched by her anguish, purloined the
articles, and Marie Antoinette was able to
press them to her heart. Toulan was
guillotined.

On the day of the king's execution the
queen asked for mourning of the simplest
kind, the costume of the people — 'a mantle

202 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

of black taffety, a black neckerchief and
skirt, a pair of black gloves, and two caps
of black taffety.' She asked at the same
time for a pair of sheets and a quilted
coverlet. But the Convention thought
that sheets and a quilt were too luxurious
for a lady in the month of January. They
granted the mourning, but refused the
coverlet.

*The widow wore mourning which she
owed to the generosity of the republic.
She had on her head a washerwoman's cap,
with weepers falling upon her shoulders.
A black veil was between the weepers and
her hair. A large white fichu was crossed
over her neck and fastened with a blunt
pin. A little black shawl edged with white
was knotted at the bodice of her black
dress. On her brow and down her temples
strayed wisps of hair that escaped from
her cap, and the hair was blanching fast.
Her mien was proud still, and her eyebrows

MARIE ANTOINETTE IN MOURNING GARB.

THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 203

had not lowered their imperial arch. Tears
had reddened her eyelids, tears had swollen
her eyes. Her look had lost its radiance
for a hard, fixed stcire. The blue of her
eyes no longer had its flashing brilliance,
its caressing softness ; it was glassy, cold,
almost fierce. The beautiful, aquiline con-
tour of her nose was become a bony ridge,
and agony seemed to have pinched the
nostrils once quivering with youth.'

This woman, who but lately had seen the
world At her feet in one emulation of flattery
and deference, who had known every form
of splendour, now in her cold and narrow
prison possessed but one comfort and stay
— we cannot say a joy — her children. The
revolutionary government thought that this
was too much. The queen, Madame, and
Madame Elizabeth were awakened by the
sound of opening gratings : it was the
guards coming to inform Marie Antoinette
of the new decree of the Committee of

204 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

Public Safety, sanctioned by the Conven-
tion : ' The Committee decrees that the
son Capet shall be separated from his
mother.' At first the queen did not under-
stand. Then suddenly she flung herself
upon her son with the cry of a wild creature.
* Kill me first! ' she cried. The men replied
that if she did not loose the child it was not
she they would kill, but the little one : and
the boy was in their hands.

At last she was utterly broken : was she
still alive? Robespierre thought that she
was as yet only too much alive. * The
punishment of a tyrant,' he cried, on April
lo, 1793, in the Convention, * obtained after
so much hateful discussion ' (the great citizen
thought that the forms of trial had been
too closely observed)— ' shall this be the
only homage we have rendered to liberty
and equality ? ' The death of Marie An-
toinette was destined to be a not less
appreciable homage to them. * This death,'

THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 205

said Robespierre in conclusion, ' shall revive
in all hearts a holy antipathy for royalty,
and give a new force to public spirit.'

On August I the Committee of Public
Safety submitted to the Convention the
following decree : * Marie Antoinette is re-
mitted to the extraordinary tribunal : she
will be transferred immediately to the Con-
ciergerie/

At one o'clock next morning the queen
was awakened. As she left the tower in
all haste without stooping, she struck her
head against the grating.
* Have you hurt yourself? '
' Oh no ! nothing can hurt me now ! '
Twenty gendarmes escorted the prisoner
through the heavy, stifling night air. She
arrived at the Conciergerie at two o'clock
in the morning. The Pere Duchesne was
beside itself with joy. * I bent my ear
to the grating,' it wrote, *to hear her
groans. ''And so I shall never see," she

206 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

said, ''the ruin of Paris which I had been
so long preparing ; I shall never swim in
her blood."'

At the Conciergerie the queen was in
want of everything. She had no change of
linen, and the wardress, Madame Richard,
dared not supply her with any, in spite of
the pity which had touched her heart. The
gendarmes were now installed in her room
from morning till night, and there they in-
dulged freely in their coarse soldier's talk
and smoked their huge pipes. At night
the queen's eyes were red and swollen
with the smoke, her head was heavy with
pain. Sometimes one of the gendarmes
would notice it and drop his pipe.

At the Temple she had been deprived
of her embroidery : here even her needles
and thread were taken from her. How
was she to pass the long, doleful hours ?
Struck with a presentiment of her approach-
ing end, she thought of employing her

THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 207

fingers to leave a little memento to her
children. And she began to pick coarse
threads from a piece of tapestry over which
wall-paper, now rotted by the damp, had
been hung. These threads she plaited with
her patient hands, and succeeded in making
a sort of lace. She had no light. * I used
to prolong my duties as much as I could in
the evening,' said Rosalie Lamorliere, her
maidservant, 'so that my mistress might
remain a little longer in solitude and ob-
scurity.' The dampness of the room was
frightful. Bault, the warder, had a piece of
old tapestry nailed to the wall in order that
the queen's bed might thus be protected to
some extent from the oozings. The members
of the Committee of Public Safety were in-
dignant at this mark of sympathy, and Bault
had to invent a falsehood, and say that his
object was to prevent the queen from hear-
ing scraps of conversation from the other
room. On August 19 Michonis, admini-

2o8 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

strator of police, asked the municipal officers
composing the guard at the Temple to send
in four chemises and a pair of shoes of which
the queen had urgent need. * These four
miserable garments,' write the Goncourts,
* soon reduced to three, were only delivered
to the queen at intervals of ten days. She
had only two dresses, which she put on alter-
nately. H er poor black dress, her poor white
dress, both rotted by the moisture of her room

We must pause here : words fail us.'

The queen had become extremely thin.
She was altered beyond recognition. The
common folk who saw her were struck with
respect and pity. The warders placed in
charge of her, the servants called to wait
upon her, were touched to the bottom of
their hearts by the sight of grief so nobly
borne. Market-women brought her fruits :
one a melon ' for her dear queen,' another
a basket of peaches — heroines all, know-
ing that for melon and peaches they were

THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 209

risking death. With the complicity of the
warders the fruits arrived at their destina-
tion. Attempts were made to effect the
queen's escape, at first from the Temple,
afterwards from the Conciergerie. The
first, directed by Toulan, almost succeeded ;
but at the last moment it became evident
that the children would not be able to
follow their mother. 'We have cherished
a fine dream,' wrote the queen to Jarjayes,
'that is all. The interests of my son are
all that I look to ; and, whatever happiness
I myself might have experienced in being
out of this, I cannot consent to be separated
from him. Be sure that I am conscious of
the goodness of your reasons so far as my
own interests are concerned, and know that
this opportunity will never offer itself again,
but I should never have a moment's joy if
I left my children, and the thought leaves
not a shadow of regret.' At the Concier-
gerie the plan of escape seemed easy of

o

210 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

execution, but the two gendarmes who
formed the guard would have had to be
killed. The queen was enduring a mar-
tyrdom, but the death of two men seemed
to her too high a price to pay for liberty.

By this time the queen's fate had been
decided. In vain was Madame de Stael, in
London, publishing her eloquent appeals to
justice and pity. ' To excite the multitude,'
she wrote, ' it was incessantly repeated that
the queen was an enemy of the French,
and to this accusation the most ferocious
forms were given. Say, you that accuse
her, what blood, what tears she has ever
caused to flow? In those ancient prisons
that you have opened, have you found one
single victim who charged Marie Antoinette
with his fate ? No queen, during the time
of her greatest power, has ever known such
open calumny, and the more certain men
were that she would not punish, the more
they multiplied their insults. We know

THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 211

that she has been the butt of innumerable
shafts of ingratitude, of thousands of lam-
poons, of revolting lawsuits, and we look
in vain for the least sign of a vengeful
action. It is true, then, that she has done
no ill to a single soul, she who is suffering
torments unheard-of.'

Of what avail were words so true and
simple.'* The Pere Duchesne had greater
authority than Madame de Stael.

It was Carrier, the hero of Nantes, who
at the height of the struggles between the
Montagne and the Gironde had created the
tribunal to which Marie Antoinette had
been remitted. The work was worthy of
its author. The juries, nominated by the
Convention, were salaried officials who were
bound to express their opinion severally
in open court. They knew that if their
verdict were not approved they would be
guillotined. That was what the men of
the Revolution called the independence of

212 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

the magistrature. 'It was only with the
proviso that the jurors should give their
verdict openly that the Friends of Liberty
agreed to the presence of jurors in this
tribunal,' writes Lamarque. Danton clearly
indicated the purpose of the tribunal in a
speech to the Assembly : * This tribunal
is to serve as a supreme court for the
vengeance of the people.' When through
a long course of months heads fell by
thousands, Danton regarded the tribunal
as serving its intention perfectly. But one
day the same court decided that Danton
himself should be guillotined, and he forth-
with declared : * It was I that established
this tribunal ; but not that it should be the
scourge of humanity.' Anecdotes of this
sort are numerous, and would give to the
Revolution a charming air of drollery if
among them one did not wade in pools of
blood.

The law relating to suspects was voted

THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 213

on September 16, 1793. The number of
judges was then increased to sixteen, that
of the jurymen to sixty. The list of can-
didates presented by Vouland was adopted
by the Convention without discussion.

* Almost all,' said Gauthier to the Jacobins,

* have been chosen among the Jacobins, and
of them we are sure.' An admirable court
for the trial of the queen ! The former
president, Montane, had been thrown into
prison because he had sought, it was said, to
get Charlotte Corday acknowledged as mad.

The hero of the tribunal was the public
prosecutor Fouquier-Tinville. When the
royal power was at its height, he was dis-
tinguished by an ardent zeal for the glory
of the king, composing in his honour a
number of ballads and occasional verses.
He had a pretty wit. Madame de Saint-
Servan happened to be paralysed in con-
sequence of a fall, and could not speak.

* It is not her tongue that we want,' cried

214 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

the prosecutor by a happy inspiration ; ' it
is her head that we want.' She was
guillotined. * Robespierre,' says Mercier,
'wanted to meet a man at once fiendish
and docile, one of those men who are
proud to become the lackeys of tyranny,
and to whom crimes cost nothing ; he met
Fouquier-Tinville. '

He was worthily seconded by the dele-
gates of the Commune, Pache, mayor of
Paris; Chaumette, a procurator; Hebert,
the procurator's deputy : names to which, sad
to relate, the name of the illustrious Louis
David has to be added. The crime com-
mitted by these men and their agents is
too horrible for words. To corrupt a child
to the destruction of his health, and then
to use his corruption as a means of abomin-
able outrage upon his mother ; not satisfied
with causing her to be insulted by her son,
a child of eight, brutalised by beatings and
brandy, but to repeat the atrocious calumny

THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 215

in open court and make use of it, after her
head had fallen, in the attempt to blacken
the victim's reputation : such things, that
seem humanly impossible, were actually
committed. The official reports of the
horrible cross-examination at the Temple
are preserved in the National Archives.
*The young prince,' writes Daujon, who
acted as clerk, ' was seated in a large chair,
swinging his little legs, which did not touch
the floor.' Did he understand the words
put into his mouth? 'Chaumette,' said
the dauphin's sister, a girl of fifteen,
' questioned me on dreadful things of which
my mother and aunt were accused. I was
overcome by such horror, and so indignant,
that, in spite of all the fear I felt, I could
not help saying it was infamous. In spite
of my tears, they persisted in their questions.
There were things I did not understand,
but what I did understand was so horrible
that I wept with indignation.'

2i6 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

The trial was fixed for the 15th of
October. Two official counsel for the
defence had been appointed by Hermann,
the president, but only on the evening
before ; and one of them, Chauveau-
Lagarde, was in the country. There was
an enormous mass of material to digest,
and by the advice of her counsel the queen
requested a delay of three days for that
purpose. Her letter was flung into the
waste-paper basket. The trial commenced

' in fact on October 15, at eight o'clock in
the morning, and continued without inter-
ruption until four o'clock next morning.
Except for one brief interval it lasted thus

' for nearly twenty hours. And the queen
had arrived exhausted, physically by months
of privation, mentally by her woes : who
would not have been overwhelmed by such
tortures ? To-day we see writers, com-
fortably settled in their armchairs, their
feet on the fender, well-salaried professors.

THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 217

in all the dignity of office, holding forth
on the attitude of Marie Antoinette before
her judges ; to their way of thinking, she
showed too little pride, too unsovereign-
like a demeanour. ' One had to be present
and watch every detail of this famous trial,'
said Chauveau-Lagarde, ' to have a just
idea of the splendid character the queen
there displayed.'

She came in her mourning dress. She
had done her best with the few rags left
to her, and had piled up her hair — her poor
blanched hair — with studied care : not
through pride, but disdaining to move the
populace by the sight of her misery.

Hermann and Fouquier-Tinville accused
Marie Antoinette of desiring to remount
to the throne upon the corpses of the
patriots. She replied : ' I have never
desired aught but the welfare of France ;
nothing but that she be happy ; and if she
is so, I shall be content.' An ordeal lasting

2i8 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

twenty hours ! Sick, without food or rest,
the queen had to put a constraint upon
herself, master herself, never for an instant
lose her self-control — to steel her failing
nerves, to command her countenance and
vanquish nature. As the spectators were
continually asking her to rise from her
seat so that they might see her better :
*Will the people soon be tired of my
fatigue ? ' she murmured, in exhaustion.

The witnesses were heard. Hebert
brought forward the filthy stories he had
concocted in collaboration with Pache,
Chaumette, and David. Short, slight, and
well-trimmed, with fair hair and a mild
countenance, he was editor of the Pere
Duchesne, and at this moment the most
influential member of the Commune. He
had married a nun of the Assomption-
Saint-Honore, a charming woman. Her
drawing-room was a brilliant centre of wit.
While insulting the aristocrats, Hebert

THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 219

envied their refinement and distinction,
and tried to copy them.

The queen let this flood of filth pass in
silence. Hebert reeled off his tale in his
suavest tones, with delicate inflections and
carefully chosen language. The queen
stood erect, her eyes fixed, her head stiff,
not a muscle of her face contracting.

It was a memorable moment. Born in
calumny, nourished on calumny, glorified
even to this day by calumny, the Re-
volution could not but give to calumny
dimensions which had never thitherto
been attained, which have never been
attained since, and which seemed unimagin-
able.

' I was going,' says Moelle, a member of
the Commune, ' to try to prove the falseness
of Hebert's accusation, by mentioning a
circumstance of the rules of the Temple
and the means of surveillance practised
there, when Fouquier-Tinville, who divined

220 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

my intention, sharply interrupted me with
the request to say plain "yes " or **no." '

Fouquier delivered his address for the
prosecution. * Not content, in concert with
the brothers of Louis Capet and the in-
famous and execrable Calonne, then finance
minister, with having squandered in a
frightful manner the finances of France,
the fruit of the people's sweat, in order to
satisfy her ill-regulated pleasures and pay
the agents of her criminal intrigues ' . . .
*at the same time that she was encourag-
ing the Swiss to make their cartridges, in
order to excite them still further she took
some cartridges and bit them ' . . . * finally,
immoral in every conceivable way, a second
Agrippina, she is so wicked and so familiar
with every crime that, forgetting her voca-
tion as mother and the limits prescribed by
the laws of nature, the widow Capet has
not shrunk from indulging with Louis Capet,
her son, by the confession of the latter him-

THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 221

self, in abominations the mere idea and
name of which make us shudder with
horror.' Such were some of his sentences.

The queen still ignoring the foul charges,
one of the jury, exasperated by such dignity,
directly questioned her : * If I have not
replied,' she said, * it is because nature
refuses to answer such an accusation made
against a mother ; I appeal to all the
mothers here present ! '

Her voice rang out, and for the first time
in the sight of the audience tears flowed
down her cheeks. * Before this sublime
cry,' say the brothers Humbert, who were
among the audience, ' a magnetic current
ran through the hall. The tricoteuses
(knitters) were touched in spite of them-
selves, and were all but applauding.'
Piercing cries were heard ; women fainted
and had to be carried out. The harsh,
nasal voice of Hermann threatened to have
the hall cleared.

222 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

At midnight the president said to the
advocates : * In a quarter of an hour the
prt)ceedings will terminate : prepare your
defence.' What could the defence be in
these conditions? The two advocates sur-
passed themselves. They spoke with
emotion and courage. Scarcely had they
finished when by order of the members
of the Committee of Public Safety present
\^ they were both arrested. De Shze, one of
the king's defenders, had been at La Force
since October 20 ; the other, Malesherbes,
was guillotined. Fouquier demanded the
head of Chauveau-Lagarde. The pleadings
were not allowed to be published, and a
garbled account of them appeared in Le
Moniteur.

As she left the court the queen gave to
Tron9on-Ducoudray, the second of her
advocates, a lock of hair and some earrings,
begging him to give them to M. de Jarjayes
as a memento. The Committee confiscated

THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 223

these articles and put M. de Jarjayes under
arrest.

Marie Antoinette was unanimously con-
demned to death. The jurors gave their
verdict publicly, and each knew that if he
was so misguided as to declare for her
innocence he would himself be guillotined.

The queen heard the sentence unmoved.
She came down from her bench with daunt-
less brow, and lifted the rail herself. She
returned to the Conciergerie at half-past
four in the morning. For the first time
in sixty days she obtained a torch, and
some ink and paper. What must her
feelings have been ! ' During this halt at
the foot of the scaffold,' as she said,
she wrote to her sister-in-law, Madame
Elizabeth, the beautiful letter, so calm and
elevated in style, which after more than
a century draws tears of admiration and
respect. She gave it to Bault the warder.
Poor woman ! she thought that these few

224 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

words of a dying sister to a sister her-
self destined to death would reach her.
Fouquier-Tinville seized the letter, and it
was discovered in the false bottom of a
drawer under a mattress of Robespierre's,
along with costly books and pictures which
this amateur of enlightened tastes had appro-
priated from those he had done to death.

The sun was shining at eight o'clock when
Marie Antoinette prepared to dress for her
journey to the scaffold. She went into the
narrow passage between her bed of sacking
and the wall, herself laid out her chemise,
bent down, and loosened her dress, to
change her linen for the last time.
Suddenly she paused. The gendarme in
attendance had approached and, with his
elbows on the pillow and his head in his
hands, was watching her with the greatest
interest. * Her Majesty,' says Rosalie
Lamorliere, her servant, ' replaced her wrap
upon her shoulders, and with great gentle-

THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 225

ness said to the young man : *' In the name
of decency, sir, allow me to change my linen
without witnesses." ** I cannot consent to
it,'* answered the gendarme brusquely; '*my
orders are to keep my eye on all your move-
ments." '

What a scene ! A gendarme lying flat
on the bed, following with curious and
prurient gaze the dressing of a queen for
her execution !

* The distress the brutality of this gen-
darme caused me,' says Rosalie Lamorliere,
'prevented my noticing whether the queen
still had the medallion of M. the Dauphin,
but I could very well see that she carefully
rolled up her poor soiled chemise. She
fastened it in one of her sleeves as in a
sheath, and then pressed it into a space
she caught sight of between the old wall-
hanging and the wall.'

In vain she asked that her hands might
not be bound on the tumbril : they were

p

226 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

tied together with such force that the cure
Girard, to ease her, had to press his hand
on her left arm during the ride. The
tumbril advanced slowly. Marie Antoinette
wore a white skirt falling over a black
petticoat, a sort of white night-vest, a
ribbon tied round the wrist, a cap of
white linen, like that of the women of the
people, with a black ribbon. She had
vainly besought that she might go to
execution bareheaded. Her white hair
was cut close under her cap. She was
pale, but had two hectic spots upon her
cheeks. Her eyes were bloodshot, her
eyelashes stiff and motionless. In the
Rue Saint- Honore the cart stopped for
a moment, and a child, lifted up in his
mother's arms, blew her a kiss, and then
clapped his little hands gleefully. The
queen responded with a smile, and wept.
These were the only tears she shed during
her passage to the scaffold.

^

J..t.r.;-f ^. .^^./. .,^/^,.,e//. .y?^-

^^- j^-;:,..

/.^,..

THE QUEEN GOING TO EXECUTION.

THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 227

'She mounted it with bravado,' said the
journals next day, with an * insolent ' air of
tranquillity. She set her dress in order for
the execution herself.

Citizen Lapierre, a good patriot, saw the
execution, and describes it in bad spelling
and picturesque terms : * Marie Antoinette,
the hussy, made as fine an end as the hog
of Godille our pork-butcher. She showed
wonderful firmness on the scaffold and all
along the Rue Saint-Honore ; in fact, she
went right across Paris staring at the
people with scorn and disdain ; but where-
ever she passed the true sansculottes never
ceased to cry : ** Long live the Republic
and down with tyranny ! " The hussy had
the strength of mind to go to the scaffold
without blenching ; but when she saw the
medicine actually before her eyes she fell
down, done for. But all the same, they
gave her valets-de-chambre and perruquiers
to make her toilette, and though she had

228 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

no beard they nevertheless gave her a
trimming, and though women don't have
them, that doesn't prevent us from shaving
them well'

Hubert, in the Pere Duchesne, celebrated
in lyric style the event of which he was so
proud to have been the principal author :
* The greatest of all the joys of the Pere
Duchesne was to see with its own eyes the
head of the Veto female separated from its
goose neck.'

And the same day, in execution of the
decree passed by the Convention, on the
motion of Barere, the mortal remains of
the eldest son of Marie Antoinette, the
first dauphin, were removed from their
tomb at Saint-Denis and shockingly pro-
faned.

Nothing had been neglected, as we have
seen. The t^te of October was complete :
*in every way successful,' as our chroniclers
would say.

THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 229

Robespierre proclaimed that the death
of Marie Antoinette would be a token of
homage to liberty and equality ; and those
two great principles thus received, on
October 16, 1793, a striking tribute.

230 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

XV

THE CARDINAL DE ROHAN IN HIS DIOCESE

Exiled to his abbey of the Chaise- Dieu
after his acquittal by the Parlement, Prince
Louis de Rohan had there won the affection
of the monks and edified the people
round. The work of an incendiary having
threatened the town with a general con-
flagration in July 1786, the cardinal was
one of the first to assist in extinguishing
the flames, along with his brother, the
Admiral de Guemen6e, who was then living
with him. When the flames had been
conquered, the monks of the abbey carried
the head of St. Robert in procession to
the scene of the disaster, and the cardinal
did not hesitate to kneel before the relic,

THE CARDINAL DE ROHAN 231

in the mud and water. The worthy in-
habitants, says a contemporary writer, were
moved to enthusiasm and admiration.

In September 1786, Louis de Rohan got
permission to leave the Abbey of the
Chaise- Dieu for that of Marmoutiers near
Tours. On August 8, 1787, he went to
live in the Abbey of St. Benoit-sur- Loire.
He had kept up a correspondence with
Maitre Target, who had so devotedly de-
fended him, and on December 1 5 he wrote
to him the following letter, apropos of
a bereavement the famous advocate had
recently suffered — a letter in which his
kindliness and generosity are well revealed :

* It seems to me, sir, that sorrows make
still more sensitive the souls that injustice
has not succeeded in hardening. I con-
fess that mine has retained that delicious
source of happiness. And if I had lost this
sensibility, I should recover it all when
your heart expresses its anguish. All your

232 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

causes of sorrow are intensified by the
sight of the difficulties of the children of
the lady you mourn. I can assist for a
time in the education of the boy, whose
sight you tell me is very weak, who is pre-
paring for the Church, and whom you pro-
bably intend to continue his studies. I will
send him, for each of the years '88, '89,
and '90, three hundred livres a year, and
then we shall see. It is very pleasant to
me to think that I can do something that
will be agreeable to you. I only wish I
could do more for the child who is so
dear to you.

' You know my feelings of friendship and
attachment for you. I will end now there-
fore with the words vale ! vale I

' P,S. You ask after my health. It is
improving, but slowly. May yours with-
stand all the sorrows of your heart.'

On December 24, 1788, the royal order
by which Rohan had been exiled was re-

THE CARDINAL DE ROHAN 233

yoked. He was at liberty to return to
Saverne, and stopped at Mlitzig in Alsace,
a place adjacent to his residence, where
the people had organised fetes in his
honour. At three o'clock in the afternoon,
the town-clerk, at the head of a detach-
ment of dragoons in uniform, superbly
equipped, and composed of the dlite of the
citizens, led his troops, sabre in hand, along
the Dorlisheim Road, lining both sides
of the way. At four o'clock the cardinal
appeared. The clerk delivered an address ;
children with curled hair presented Rohan
with nosegays. The crowd had assembled
from all parts of the district. Near the great
bridge, the Jews, two hundred in number,
clothed all in black, were ranged in line,
their rabbi at their head. The rabbi made
a speech, to which the cardinal replied that
he was delighted to see them again ; where-
upon the Jews indulged in demonstrations
of 'the most lively and unfeigned joy.' At .

234 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

the gates of the town all the clergy were
assembled, with crosses and banners —
parish priests and higher ecclesiastics.
The town was hung with bunting. Reach-
ing the chateau * amid the sound of cymbals
and trumpets, and the combined roar of can-
non and musketry,' Rohan was harangued
by the chief magistrate of Schirmeck. In
the evening there was a general illumination.
A number of the citizens drank too freely of
Rhenish wine. The cardinal would not end
this magnificent day without entering the
synagogue, which was blazing with lights.
He stayed there for half an hour, while they
sang with appropriate gestures a Hebrew
canticle, of which he understood nothing ;
but he told the rabbi he thought it
charming, and thanked the Israelites once
more for their kindness, their speeches, and
all the candles they had lit for him. To
wind up the fete, the more important
burghers and inhabitants of the town, and

THE CARDINAL DE ROHAN 235

the dragoon corps in uniform, supped
copiously in the town hall. In the square
there was dancing by torchlight all night
long. The Jews assembled in the house
of one Daniel Levy, and drank wine and
beer till dawn. 'In a word, everybody,
rich, poor, young, old, gave rein to their
feelings of respect and affection and joy.
Each and all welcomed the happy return,
so long desired, of their august prince-
bishop.'

Sent as deputy to the States-General by
the clergy of Haguenau, Rohan fulfilled a
modest part there, notwithstanding the
efforts made to play him off as a victim of
despotism. The revolutionary movement
was growing apace. Reinstated in his title
of Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, Louis
de Rohan retired to Ettenheim-Mlinster, in
the part of his estates situated on the right
bank of the Rhine. Though his fortune
was considerably reduced, he continued to

236 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

support, to the utmost of his power, the
priests and poor nobles who had been
driven from their homes.

The civil constitution of the clergy was
decreed on July 1 2, 1 790, and their canonical
institution taken from the Pope. The
religious orders had been suppressed in
February.

Rohan on this occasion addressed to his
clergy and the faithful in his diocese a
pastoral charge in which he spoke in warm
terms against the * novelties which the
Apostle condemns and which are carrying
desolation into the sanctuary.' He set
himself to explain — but on this point his
argument is historically very feeble — that in
the early days of the Church the pastors were
not elected by the people. For the Revolu-
tion was claiming to do nothing else than
restore the Church to its primitive purity.
The cardinal was more successful when he
showed the absurdity of leaving the election

THE CARDINAL DE ROHAN 237

of bishops in the hands of those who did
not profess the CathoHc faith. Moreover,
he undertook the defence of the GalHc
church, *that ancient edifice, founded on
the first successors of the Apostles, watered
by the blood of the martyrs, rendered
illustrious by the lights of the greatest
doctors,' and which, he said, was crumbling
to pieces under their eyes. And further, in
a bold and thoroughly literary metaphor —
a reflection from the Academy of which he
was a member — he added : ' The purple in
which we are clothed warns us that we
ought always to be ready, not merely to
speak, but to shed our blood for the cause
of God and His Church.'

These episcopal proceedings were the
cause of the issue of a decree by the
National High Court, on July 13, 1791, for.
the arrest of the cardinal as *the author of
letters, episcopal charges, canonical ex-
hortations, pastoral instructions, containing

238 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

formal protests against the constitutional
laws of the state, and tending to excite the
people to insurrection.' He was further
accused of having * charged the Sieur Zipp,
priest of Schierich, to distribute the libels
and writings ' incriminated.

Meanwhile Euloge Schneider, a Fran-
ciscan, a native of Wlirtzburg, professor of
philosophy at the University of Bonn,
appointed by the constitutional bishop of
Strasburg professor of rhetoric at the
Grand Seminary, and afterwards his vicar-
general, was all-powerful in Alsace, and
was there bringing to the guillotine whole-
sale all who attempted to teach Frenchmen
the love of country and liberty.

Rohan died at Ettenheim on February
17, 1803, after appointing as his universal
legatee Charlotte Dorothea de Rohan-
Rochefort, daughter of Prince Armand de
Rohan- Rochefort, his cousin-german. She
had been betrothed to the handsome Duke

THE CARDINAL DE ROHAN 239

of Enghien, slain by Napoleon s orders in
the moats of Vincennes, and under the in-
structions of General Hulin, who had
been in the front rank of the conquerors
of the Bastille.

240 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

XVI

LAMOTTE-COLLIER

We have seen that on July 20, 1792, the
court of the first arrondissement had
quashed, for a technical flaw, the sentence
passed on the Count de La Motte, husband
of Jeanne de Valois, by the Parlement.
The prisoner was transferred to the Con-
ciergerie, there to await the definitive
judgment which would proclaim, he was
assured, his complete rehabilitation. He
was still in prison during September ; then,
being liberated, and escaping the massacre,
he returned to Bar-sur-Aube.

On December 6, 1793, he was incar-
cerated on an information accusing him of
being in correspondence with Pitt and

*^ Of THE

LAMOTTE-COLLIER 241

Coburg, and confined with suspects in the
Grand Seminary of Troyes, where he re-
mained until July 22, 1794. But he was no
sooner liberated than he was again put
under lock and key, and detained until
October 16. Liberated once more, he
married for the second time at Bar-sur-
Aube, his wife being a young girl named
Marie Clotilde Boudon, who had some
means of her own. She in course of time
presented him with a son. This son de-
parted about 1 8 1 7 for Guadeloupe with the
battalion despatched to that colony ; but
his father never heard of him again : the
young man died there of yellow fever.

Count Beugnot having been appointed
director-general of the police, La Motte
applied to him for assistance. Beugnot
gave him that and more ; he gave him
the control of the theatre of the Porte-
Saint- Martin, at a salary of 3000 francs.
As we know, Beugnot had peculiar reasons
Q

242 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

for showing benevolence towards the
husband of Jeanne de Valois, whom he had
so often taken to dinner at the Cadran bleu.
La Motte afterwards fulfilled the same
functions at the same remuneration in the
gaming-houses. But he could never retain a
situation ; he was an incorrigible Bohemian.

* In 1816,' wrote the commissary Marlot,
who, like himself, came from Bar-sur-Aube,

* M. Delamotte was recommended to us,
and the persons who sent him to us inspired
us with so much respect that their recom-
mendation could be regarded only as a
sovereign command. We solicited for him
a place as inspector of police, and had him
under our orders for about three years,
under the name of Delmotte.' The Count

( de La Motte a police agent under the
Restoration! — the irony of it is almost

\^ overwhelming.

During this period of his life, La Motte
thus had means of supporting himself in

LAMOTTE-COLLIER 243

a regular manner. He frequented the
houses of people of good standing, and was
received in several drawing-rooms described
by Victor Hugo as * very good and very
notable.' As is well known, Hugo incor-
porated in Les Mis^rables fragments of
personal recollections, and he speaks of the
Count de La Motte in a vivid and striking
manner/ He shows him to us in the
Legitimist drawing-room in the Rue F^rou,
which he describes in precise terms, except
that he mentions the habituds only by
initials — all but La Motte, whom he names
in full.

'Madame de T.,' writes Victor Hugo,
* lived far from the court — '*a very mixed
society," as she used to say — in an honour-
able, proud, penurious isolation. A few
friends met twice a week around her
widowed hearth, constituting a purely
Royalist salon. They took tea together,

1 Les Misdrables^ Part ill. Marius : Book ni. chap. i.

244 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

and gave vent, according as the tide was
set towards elegy or dithyrambs, to groan-
ings or cries of horror on the age, the
charter, the Bonapartists, the prostitution
of the **blue ribbon" to the middle
classes, the Jacobinism of Louis xviii. ; and
they talked under their breath of the
hopes awakened by Monsieur, afterwards
Charles x.

* They used to receive with shrieks of
mirth vulgar songs in which Napoleon
was called Nicolas, Duchesses, the most
refined and charming women of good
society, went into raptures over rhymes
like this, addressed to the ''federals" —

" Renfoncez dans vos culottes
Le bout d'chemis' qui vous pend ;
Qu'on n' dis pas qu' les patriotes
Ont arbore I'drapeau blanc ! " '

Such was the society frequented in the
early years of the Restoration by the
husband of the late Jeanne de Valois, who

LAMOTTE-COLLIER 245

no doubt did not obtrude the functions in
which he was then employed by the police.
He was indeed one of the shining lights of
the company.

* Like some church spires,' writes Victor
Hugo, *the salon of the Baronne de T.
had two cocks.^ One was Dr. Gillenor-
mand, the other the Count de Lamotte-
Valois, about whom they used to whisper
to each other with a sort of consideration,
"You know? He's the Lamotte of the
Necklace business." '

La Motte appeared to the baronne's
guests an old man 'with nothing remark-
able about him but his silent and sententious
air, his sharp and expressionless features,
his perfectly polished manners, his coat
buttoned up to his cravat, and his long
legs, always crossed, in loose pantaloons,
the colour of burnt sienna. His face was

[^ Coq is used in French as equivalent to our ' cock of the
walk.']

246 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

the same colour as his pantaloons ! ' La
Motte was a valued member of the society
that met in the Rue Ferou. He owed his
position to his 'celebrity,' and strangely
enough, as Hugo justly observes, to the name
of Valois which he tacked on to his own.

The count appears, however, to have
rendered some service as a police officer,
especially in the conspiracy against the
Duke Decaze in which Generals Donnadieu
and Canuel were implicated. He was
skilful in unearthing the authors of books
and pamphlets which were to be proceeded
against. Now it happened that Louis xviii.
had the whim to set on foot inquiries about
the famous Count de La Motte. The in-
vestigations intrusted to the police were
not long, as may be imagined, in bearing
fruit, and the king was not a little surprised
to learn that the husband and accomplice
of the terrible Jeanne de Valois was one
of the agents attached to his own intelli-

LAMOTTE-COLLIER 247

gence service. Louis suggested that he
should compile his memoirs, desiring to
read them as written by his own hand.
* We were instructed,' writes the commis-
sary Marlot, * to inform M. Delamotte, and
we succeeded in inducing him to do what
the sovereign desired. But at the end of
some months this original character came
and told us that he should finish nothing
unless he were assured of a pension on
the civil list. This demand offended the
king, and M. Delamotte was given up :
since then, he has vegetated in the capital.'

Meanwhile he had lost his second wife,
whom he appears to have sincerely loved.
From that time he sank deeper and deeper
into want and wretchedness.

In 1824 we hear of him again. He was
lodging at No. 8 Rue de la Clef, and was
in continuous relation with a retired metal-
turner named Pannisset, an advocate named
Maitre Caille, and a commission agent

248 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

named Vinet-Barmont. ' Profiting by the
neglect in which the government left him,'
notes a report to the Minister of the
Interior, ' the said Lamotte-Collier recently
devised a swindling scheme which is by
no means new to him, and very closely
resembles the first swindles he so fruitfully
exploited forty years ago against the un-
fortunate queen. Lamotte has been for
some time occupied, along with confeder-
ates, in the fabrication of an alleged
correspondence of the royal family, especi-
ally of the late king Louis xviii. with
Marat and Robespierre.' A very wealthy
Englishman had offered a large sum for
these documents. La Motte tried to entice
him by reading a few extracts ; but the
Englishman wanted the originals. ' Im-
possible,' said La Motte; 'they are at
Brussels.' The would-be purchaser, rightly
distrusting the count, broke off the negotia-
tions.

LAMOTTE-COLLIER 249

Then the count threatened a second time
to publish his memoirs, giving the true
story of the Necklace, he said, adding in
a tone of deep sadness that the late queen
and a number of personages of the old
court would be inevitably compromised in
them, in spite of his desire to avoid such
a misfortune. The anxiety of the restored
monarchy to steer clear of fresh scandals
may be imagined. Delavau, the prefect
of police, got his friend Pannisset to speak
to La Motte. He was offered an assured
income, provided he drew up a true account
of the events in which he had been con-
cerned, and placed it in the hands of the
government. The bargain was struck,
and the prefect provided La Motte with a
lodging in Rue Copeau. He there received
a monthly pension of one hundred and fifty
francs, and in addition, the clothes and other
articles he needed. Pannisset made the pur-
chases, and his outlay was refunded by the

250 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

prefect of police. This lasted through the
years 1824 and 1825. La Motte compiled
his memoirs, and handed them to Pannisset
when completed, getting a receipt stating
that he remained the owner. Pannisset
transmitted them to his friend the prefect.

They were a tissue of gross and absurd
lies. The prefect and the Minister of the
Interior saw that they had been fooled, and
sent the author about his business. He
went to lodge with an English doctor
named Harkell in Rue de la Michodiere,
afterwards going to live in the village of
Orsel.

Early in 1827 a lawsuit, which made
some stir because ' Lamotte-Collier,' as
he had been called for some years, was
concerned in it, recalled him to public
notice. In 1793, as we have said, he had
been arrested at Troyes as a suspect.
Ingenious in turning the most trivial cir-
cumstances to his advantage, La Motte

LAMOTTE-COLLIER 251

had claimed 50,000 francs damages against
the two officers commanding the detach-
ment by which he had been apprehended,
alleging that they had robbed him of horses,
expensive weapons, and other articles of
value. The two officers, campaigning with
the army of the Rhine, had even been
condemned by default. La Motte now
revived the affair after thirty years. There
was a sensation among the audience when
the advocate of the defendants explained
in open court exactly who the plaintiff was. /
* The murderer of the queen ! ' some one
cried out. ' La Motte's advocate,' we read
in the Gazette des Tribunaux, * hinting that
he still had the protection of people in high
places, and received support from their
beneficence — he even murmured the word
** government " — there was a no less lively
sensation in the audience than in the royal
court' A report to the Minister of the
Interior notes down some of the sayings

252 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

of the crowd. ' How can there be any-
possible connection between such a man
and any one of the ministers, I don't care
who it is?'

* The police will make use of anybody.'
*If the police do their duty, now that

another scandal has been caused by the
appearance of the queen's murderer, they
can't fail to lock him up in Bicetre.'

* Maitre Lavaux,' continues the Gazette
des Tribunaux, ' addressed the court for the
defendants. In regard to the losses alleged
by the Count de La Motte, he lost in reality
only a powder-horn, a pair of pistols, a
pair of scissors, and a razor (laughter).
It was true that a judgment was obtained
by surprise against the defendants in their
absence. The case he is trying to resus-
citate is simply an attempt to raise the
wind. He has printed slanderous memoirs,
and threatened the defendants that he will
publish them ; but they refused to have

LAMOTTE-COLLIER 253

anything to do with him/ La Motte was
fined and condemned in costs.

This case, which had directed public at-
tention afresh to the Count de La Motte,
had unpleasant consequences for him. He
had formed the habit of taking a daily-
walk in the galleries of the Palais Royal.
Noticed, he was hissed and hooted away
by the people walking there. He then fell
back on the Luxembourg, a quieter and less
frequented spot.

He was lodging at this time at the house
of a lady named Legrand. Aged seventy-
five, infirm, crippled with gout and rheu-
matism, unable to drag himself along without
crutches, we find him trading to the last
moment of his life on the scandal of his
name, and on the injury he would do to the
royal power by the revelations he was con-
stantly announcing as a thunderbolt. And
in truth it almost seems as though the very
spirit of his first wife were at this time

254 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

animating his shattered frame. In a letter
of March 24, 1827, Delavau, the prefect of
poHce, writes to the Minister of the Interioi::
' He has just collected in a fresh memoir all
the slanders and inventions he had already-
written elsewhere, and he is looking for
some one who will be good enough to buy
his disgraceful manuscript.'

La Motte had known intimately the
costumier Babin, who had died recently,
and he continued to visit his house. Babin's
widow gave him his meals on the days — and
they were numerous — when his purse did
not contain enough to buy food.

At Madame Babin's he met the bookseller
Correard, and made an agreement with him
for the publication of new memoirs on the
everlasting Necklace affair — memoirs so
compiled as to tickle the palate of the
public. But as La Motte, old, infirm, in-
capable of writing, could not hold a pen,
Correard gave him as collaborator (as

LAMOTTE-COLLIER 255

* toucher-up,' said La Motte) a young
schoolmaster living at Saint-Denis, a native
of Bar-sur-Aube like himself. His name
was Charles Fellens. La Motte undertook
to furnish within a specified time sufficient
material for three octavo volumes on the
Necklace case, the whole to be revised and
corrected by Fellens. While the work was
in progress the count had arranged to live
with Fellens, who would provide him with
food and all other necessaries. After the
first volume was issued he was to receive
an annuity of 1200 francs, the amount for
the first year to be paid in advance.

Here then we have our friend at Saint-
Denis, in Fellens' house, literally under
lock and key — *in arbitrary confinement/
as said a certain Madame Perrot, none
other than Jeanne de La Tour, La Motte's
niece, who had so prettily played the inno-
cent young thing in Cagliostro's magic
stances. From morning till night La Motte

256 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

scribbled away. Correard put at his dis-
position all the pamphlets and documents
he could procure on the Necklace affair, and
he worked zealously at his compilation, so
that the bookseller was at first highly pleased
with the progress made. But gradually his
ardour cooled. His temporary supervision
of the gaming-houses had bred in him a
passion, which grew stronger with age, for
calculating chances at roulette and trente-
et-un. One day Fellens saw on his table a
quantity of cards, and leaves of paper com-
pletely covered with figures. Asking an
explanation, he was instructed by La Motte
in the science of gambling. He conceived
a passion for it, and then both of them,
author and * toucher-up,* throwing aside the
manufacture of memoirs, might have been
seen playing at cards from night till morn-
ing, and from morning till night calculating
the probabilities. Fellens was so blindly
infatuated with his tutor's method that he

LAMOTTE-COLLIER 257

decided to sell his school, and with the
proceeds to break all the banks in the
capital at trente-et-un.

The new prefect of police, De Belleyme,
hearing about the scheme for publishing
memoirs on the Necklace, intervened as his
predecessor had done. Once more applica-
tion was made to M. Pannisset, the quondam
metal-turner, now tenant of the Henri iv.
baths. On September i, 1828, the count
signed the following receipt, which he placed
in Pannisset's hands : —

* I, the undersigned, acknowledge the re-*^
ceipt from M. Pannisset of the sum of 500
francs, in return for which I agree not to
demand from him, or from any one whatso-
ever, the return of the notes relative to the
Necklace affair which I have given him at
different times, and also bind myself to
write no more on that subject, nor to furnish
any material whatsoever relating to it* "^

It may be imagined that his project of

R

258 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

publishing memoirs was now definitively
given up. ' Under a simple exterior,' says a
note from the prefecture of police addressed
about this time to the Minister of the
Interior, * La Motte is really very crafty.'

On January 5, 1829, four months after
signing the above undertaking, he wrote to
Belleyme, the prefect of police : ' The
moment I learnt of your appointment to
succeed M. Delavau, hope sprang up anew
in my heart, and I thought I should succeed
in making known the wrong-doing and in-
justice of your predecessor. Then I got
Dr. Harkell to present to you the true
story of the conduct of M. Delavau and
his agents in trying to persuade me to
write my memoirs and deliver the manu-
script to them. I had been recommended
not to compromise the queen. I have as
much as possible avoided the suspicions
hovering about her, and only too well
founded.' Note the last phrase.

LAMOTTE-COLLIER 259

La Motte adds that he has made up his
mind to sue Pannisset before the courts for
the restitution of the manuscript of his
memoirs, which he had been prudent
enough to hand over only in exchange for
a receipt acknowledging that Pannisset held
them merely in trust. Then M. Gauthier,
head of the third police bureau, intervened,
says La Motte, and urged Pannisset to
make an amicable arrangement in order
to avoid the scandal of publicity. ' At this
time I was in a very unfortunate plight.
M. Gauthier knew this, and thought that
in my distress I should be glad enough to
accept any trifle. On the verge of being
homeless and without food, I was forced to
accept the 500 francs which Gauthier offered
me, out of which Pannisset kept 55 francs
for his expenses. So I received 445 francs,
and of this sum I owed 300 to my landlord
for board and lodging. M. Gauthier took
care to make me give him a receipt, in

26o CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

which it was said that I agreed to return
to Pannisset the receipt I got from him,
never to write again on this subject, and
never to supply anybody with notes that
could serve the same object.' And he goes
on : * There 's an old proverb which says
''necessity has no law." I should have
signed anything that was put before me at
that critical moment.'

La Motte could not believe that the
prefect of police had had any hand in
this transaction. 'About a fortnight ago/
he continues, 'finding myself in the same
situation as that in which I was forced to
accept the 500 francs from M. Gauthier, a
person of my acquaintance, to whom I had
revealed my distress, proposed to present
me to a person who might be useful to
me and perhaps secure me a livelihood.
I did not hesitate, and allowed myself to
be taken to him. I found two persons
instead of one. They proposed to make

LAMOTTE-COLLIER 261

arrangements with me to take up my
memoirs afresh, without concealing any-
thing about the numerous persons who
had figured in the Necklace affair. To
come to a complete understanding on all
these points, they had a second meeting
with me in the country on December 28
last. I met the two gentlemen, and they
showed me three sheets of stamped paper
on a table, telling me that we should have
time to draw up three deeds before dinner.
I stopped them for a moment to inform
them of the agreement M. Gauthier had
made me sign, but told them that I regarded
the agreement as null and void after the
conduct that had been shown towards me,
comparing him, in the position in which
I then found myself, to a man demanding
my money or my life in the depths of a
wood, and presenting a pistol at my head.'

The two gentlemen were charmed with
the comparison, but thought the agreement

262 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

constituted an obstacle to the publication of
new memoirs.

' Is that all ? Why, that 's the best of it !
They will attack you ; all the better for our
interests and yours if they make a scandal.
We will defend ourselves, and the editions
will go off all the quicker.'

La Motte then enumerates the excellent
terms made with him: a salary of 1200
francs, and 200 francs extra for every new
edition. There was also talk of reprinting
the memoirs of Madame de La Motte burnt
in the furnace at Sevres ; by so doing his
annual income would be raised by 100
livres.

He concludes : * In this state of things,
wishing to avoid scandal, my age, my in-
firmities, and my repugnance to making
myself talked about, and especially to
offending the royal family by the confessions
and the details I should have been forced
to give in the course of the work, decided

' LAMOTTE-COLLIER 263

me before writing a single line to consult
you as to what I ought to do, for it will be
an easy matter to treat with these gentle-
men.

* I will merely mention to you, Monsieur
the Prefect, that the death of the unfortunate
Louis XVI. left me without means of sub-
sistence, and that if Louis xviii., who had
desired to know all the details of this affair
[we have seen above what had induced
the king to give up his desire], had lived
a few months longer, I should not have
been reduced to-day to begging your pro-
tection in order to obtain an equivalent for
the agreement made with these gentlemen.
If I obtain this favour from you, I shall
pass the remainder of my days in peace and
happiness. I am seventy-five years old. I
am crushed by infirmities, and have scarcely
strength enough left to drag myself along
with crutches. In this unhappy state I am
expecting every day to succumb, owing to

264 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

the awful pain I suffer and the falls I am
constantly having. The government or the
persons with whom I have been in treaty
will not have me long as an annuitant.'

The concluding passage is presented with
all the formality and the flattery he thinks
necessary. ' The eulogy which is passed
on your administration, added to the
eminent qualities which distinguish you,
persuade me that you will use your credit to
prevent a scandal. I am assured that in
your wisdom and intelligence you will well
weigh the course that should be adopted
in these circumstances. I am at ease
regarding the future.'

A perfect letter in its kind : ingeniously
woven subtleties, insinuations, unctuous in
their impudence, a honeyed and unblushing
attempt at extortion.

The prefect of police remitted the matter
to the commissary Marlot, who replied on
July i6, 1829: *I have known the Count

LAMOTTE-COLLIER 265

de La Motte since his childhood. He is a
fellow-countryman of mine, and I knew him
in his days of splendour and renown, as
well as in the poverty into which he is ever
sinking deeper. He has been writing for
five months as often as his feeble health
permits, and submitting pages for Fellens'
correction as he writes them. He has
already completed twenty-eight manuscript
books, which they calculate will make two
volumes. They are padding them out to
make three if they can. On Monday the 1 3th
M. Fellens came to Paris, accompanied by
M. de La Motte, whom he keeps a tight hold
on. They left a part of the manuscript with
Corr^ard, enough for the first volume. The
printer is going to begin at once, and the
other two volumes will follow as rapidly as
possible, so that they may be issued to the
public within two months at the latest.
M. de La Motte is very anxious to have an
interview with me, and wants to be freed

266 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

from the clutches of Fellens, of whom he
has a good deal to complain. He asks for
a pension, in return for which he would un-
dertake to publish nothing. Would he keep
his word ? I doubt it, and I should be very-
sorry to go bail for him in that respect.'

The commissary concludes : * This La
Motte is an old man as hardened in vice
as he is to reverses. We doubt whether he
has enough inclination towards good to be
honest and remain faithful to an engage-
ment. Nevertheless, as he is infirm, in-
dolent, and incapable of doing anything by
himself, it will be a great thing if Fellens
can be detached from him and strictly
forbidden to ply the trade of pamphleteer
(does he not, in his capacity as schoolmaster,
depend on the minister of public instruc-
tion ?). Madame Perrot, the niece (formerly
Jeanne de La Tour), assures me that the
memoirs will be virulent and scandalous,
and that no august name will be spared.'

LAMOTTE-COLLIER 267

Further, Marlot was to have an interview
at the first opportunity with La Motte
himself. He met him on July 17. The
count repeated that he was anxious not to
have his memoirs printed. * He would give
up the idea,' says Marlot, * if the govern-
ment would guarantee him a pension.' It
would not be for long, he adds, since La
Motte was in such a state of decrepitude
that it was impossible to think he could last
much longer.

These projects of publishing the memoirs
of Count de La Motte and reprinting those
of his wife formed part of a larger plan of
campaign against the late queen Marie
Antoinette, whom the * patriots ' continued
to regard as insufficiently guillotined. Atj^
this very time, Baudouin, the bookseller,
was occupied in publishing certain letters
alleged to have been written by her and to
her before and during the Revolution, in

268 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

which details of high relish were expected.
' M. Baudouin,' says a report to the Minister
of the Interior, dated August 2, 1829, 'has
already given so many marks of hatred
against religion and the monarchy, by print-
ing seditious writings, that several members
of the Bourbon family, as he says himself,
could not but be justly alarmed at the
announcement mentioned above.' The
report gives other details : * It is no doubt
on account of his devotion to the anti-
religious and anti-monarchical cause, and
by way of encouragement and a mark of
affection, that the Society of the Temple,
of which he is a member, has intrusted to
him the high functions of general steward
of the estates of the order; an honorary
office, it is true, since the order of the said
Templars possesses no known estates.'

On Saturday, August i, a Templar had
visited Baudouin, and found him walking
up and down in the gardens of the mad-

LAMOTTE-COLLIER 269

house in Rue de I'Oursine, where he was
then living. Baudouin knew that the
government had written to Vienna.

* For all that, I am in possession of some
original and authentic copies of the letters
I have announced for publication.'

* But aren't you afraid of a surprise raid ? '
asked the Templar.

* That was thought of, but they haven't
dared to do it. Besides, I have taken
measures to protect my papers from forcible
seizure. They sent detectives to me to
try to pick up a few stray bits of paper.
They 've made me offers, or hinted at doing
so, but I have paid them no attention.'

* I must tell you,' said the Templar, * that
some people are afraid you will give way.'

* No fear of that. It's too good a thing
for the patriots. I am a child of the
Revolution.'

A note affixed to the report gives the
information that these letters of the queen

2/0 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

extended from the year 1788 to her in-
carceration at the Temple. They were
addressed to the Emperor of Austria,
Madame de Polignac, the Duke of Luxem-
bourg, and several persons at court. The
greater part were copies of letters in cipher.
All were apocryphal.

About the middle of August 1829,
Marlot had a second interview with La
Motte, who came to see him of his own
accord. * He came to sound us,' writes the
police officer, 'on our ideas as to the
intentions of the new Ministry (the Polignac
Ministry), desiring to learn if the present
authorities entered into the views of MM.
de Martignac and Belleyme, which appeared
to be to purchase the silence of this wretch,
in guaranteeing him a pension, and in-
demnifying his collaborators, Fellens and
Correard. We stood on the greatest re-
serve in this matter with M. de La Motte,
contenting ourselves with persuading him

LAMOTTE-COLLIER 271

to temporise, to act with circumspection,
and not to run risks that would be fatal,
not to his reputation, which is a mere
illusion for a man of his stamp, but to his
personal security. He appeared to pay-
heed to our remarks, or rather, they
seemed to scare him, by suggesting to his
mind a future of worry as the inevitable
consequence of his unpleasant publications.

* M. de La Motte,' continues Marlot, 'con-
fided to us that his work contained some
very virulent passages, and in particular
some curious revelations on the intimacy
between the late queen and Madame de
Polignac, mother of the present minister.'

Then follows a passage which it is im-
possible to reproduce : its purport may be
conjectured.

*At this,' adds Marlot, 'we could not
contain our indignation, and we told M.
de La Motte pretty plainly that if such
disgusting things came out, the only

272 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

possible result for him would be disgrace
and a severe sentence. He left us, promis-
ing with his tongue in his cheek that he
would think it over/

The prefect of police sent to the Minister
of the Interior a report in which the details
given by Marlot were summarised. The
report added : * It will soon be a year since
La Motte-Valois proposed to sell his silence
to the Administration. He asked for a
pension of three or four hundred francs,
and a shelter at the Hospice of Chaillot.
This offer was not accepted ; perhaps it
might be renewed.' A marginal note tells
us that the minister thought there was no
occasion to reopen the matter. The
promises of La Motte struck him as
unreliable.

There were two separate compilations of
the Memoirs of Nicolas de La Motte : the
first handed to Pannisset in 1824, trans-

LAMOTTE-COLLIER 273

mitted by him to the prefecture of police,
and deposited in the archives of the
prefecture, whence it shortly afterwards
disappeared. But in the sequel the
manuscript was discovered, as is shown
by the following letter, dated August 8,
1829, addressed by Belleyme to the
Minister of the Interior : —

* I have the honour to transmit to your
excellency the manuscript of the Memoirs of
M. Delamotte-Valois, which M. Duplessis,
late chief of division at the prefecture, has
just handed to me, to make what use of it
your excellency thinks fit.'

This first compilation, still unpublished, is
preserved to-day in the National Archives.
A second version, which La Motte tried to
get bought up, as we have seen, was
compiled in collaboration with Fellens. It
was published long after its author's death
by Louis Lacour, numerous passages
being suppressed.

274 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

The compilation and publication of these
Memoirs, for the sake of the profit he hoped
to derive through the scandal they would
create, was La Motte s constant preoccupa-
tion during the last part of his life, just as
the publication of her memoirs had filled the
last days of his wife Jeanne de Valois. Both
regarded them simply as a means of bringing
pressure to bear on the royal government,
alarmed at the sensation they were bound
to make.

The Memoirs of the Count de La Motte,
often quoted from the edition issued by
Louis Lacour in 1858, are, to put it shortly,
of no historical value whatever : they are a
tissue of lies and clumsy fables. Doubtless
they contain authentic details which it
would be very interesting to sift out and
collect : but how is it possible to distinguish
them among the heaps of falsehoods ? La
Motte composed his account of the Necklace
affair forty years after the events, at an

LAMOTTE-COLLIER 275

advanced age, and in deplorable weakness
and decrepitude. And finally, he made .
great use of other works relating to those
events, works supplied him by his associates ;
so that his Memoirs are not even personal
recollections, nor was it he who held the pen.

The prefecture of police resolved to
ignore the opinion expressed by the minister
in his marginal note to its report. Possibly,
indeed, the minister himself changed his
mind. Whether or no, La Motte was again y
pensioned, from dread of a scandal. As
we have just seen, his Memoirs did not
appear until after his death.

*0n September 14, 1829,' writes Lafont
d'Aussonne, * as I was crossing the Luxem-
bourg wood on my way to the gate nearest the
Rue Cassette, I caught sight of the Count de
La Motte entering the great chestnut avenue.
I followed his stumbling footsteps as he
shuffled along heavily on his two crutches.

276 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

His elegant and careful get-up, his perfectly
polished manners, his courtly mode of saluta-
tion, spoke in his favour. The ladies sitting
on the seat moved up so that he might be
more comfortable. I placed myself very
near the count, and called him aloud by his
name.' They entered into conversation.
*M. de Belleyme,' said the count, * continued
to give me a little pension of loo louis out of
the police funds. He sent for me as I
was finishing the revision of my Memoirs.
He condescended to announce his change
of plans for the following week. "• Drop
all these stories," he said to me as we
separated.'

La Motte was at this time living with
his niece, Madame Perrot, at 17 Rue des
Cannettes.

We meet him for the last time in the
eventful days of July 1830, at the age of
seventy-seven. He was caught in a crowd,
and fell wounded. The officer of gen-

LAMOTTE-COLLIER 277

darmerie who was on duty had him carried
to a neighbouring house. On October 11,
1 83 1, he entered the hospital of St. Louis,
and died there on November 6. In the
last years of his life he had made several
attempts at suicide. * I followed the river-
bank as far as Villeneuve-Saint-Georges.
With the help of my two hands, I slid
down to the edge of the embankment. I
looked at the spot where I was going to
fall, and was on the point of letting go the
grass I was firmly holding, when, plunging
my eyes into the depths about to swallow
me up, I fancied I saw billows of blood
rolling down the stream.' These billows of
blood, he declares, recalled to his mind the
events of September, and he lost all desire
to commit suicide.

His death is announced in t\i^ Journal de
Paris in the following terms : ' M. Musto-
phragasis. Count de Valois, Knight of St.
Louis and of the Crown, noble of Angou-

278 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

leme, has just died in Paris, at an advanced
age, and in poverty. He was the husband
of the famous Madame de La Motte-Valois.
He was generally known by the name of
Valois-Collier.'

LEGENDS 279

V

XVII

LEGENDS

So great was the impression produced by
the Necklace affair that, as often happens
in similar circumstances, the principal actors
in the drama came to life again after their
deaths.

In 1793, the Count de Semalld met at
Liege the Baronne d'Oliva, who had been
buried at Vincennes on June 25, 1789.
This reincarnation of the pretty Nicole
Leguay was married to a certain M. de La
Tour, and in concert with him was passing
forged notes in various parts of France. Her
resemblance to the queen, says Semalle,
was striking. * She assured me more than
once that she had no suspicion of the odious

28o CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

part she had been made to play in the
intrigue, and that she had been the dupe
of Madame de La Motte.' But one morning
Semalle learnt that the soi-disant Baronne
d'Oliva had quietly absconded, along with
her husband.

The last of the biographers of Madame
de La Motte, M. Louis de Soudak, found
the heroine (who, as we have seen, died
in London on August 23, 1791) in the
Crimea in 1825. Staroi-Krim bears little
trace to-day of the incomparable Solkata of
the Armenian poets, the rival of Stamboul,
which the finest cavaliers of the Golden
Band could barely ride round at a gallop
in half a day. Where once rose the ancient
ramparts are now ditches, almost filled with
sand by the winds of the Steppes. Beyond
them is an old mosque propped up by rude
beams, and traces of the ancient palaces,
pulled to pieces by hands eager to construct
new dwellings, which in their turn are

LEGENDS 281

crumbling away. In that spot there exists
the garden of an Armenian potter, and in
the garden may be found an old man seated
on a large stone. In slow tones and with
measured gesture the greybeard relates as
follows : —

* There used to be in these parts a
Countess Gachet, a former Queen of France,
who had stolen a Necklace. I was a little
fellow when she called me to her side, to
amuse me with a large diamond, which
she turned round in the sunlight at the
end of a golden chain, till it made me
blink. When she died, and was undressed
to wash her body, two letters were found
branded on her shoulders.'

* It is strange,' says Louis de Soudak,
'that the name and the story of the
heroine of the Necklace case should have
reached the Crimea at a time when that
peninsula had few inhabitants but Tartars
and absolutely ignorant Greek fishermen.'

282 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

* In 1894,' continues the traveller, *I
stopped one beautiful sunny morning at
Gourzouf, near Yalto, under a superb plane-
tree, at the spot where it appears that
Poushkin wrote some of his finest verses.
Seeing a Tartar passing by, I asked him
what interesting things were to be seen in
the district. Indicating the north by a
gesture, he answered: **At Artek, a few
versts in that direction, there is a house
where Madame Gachet lived, a woman
who had stolen a very fine necklace from
the queen of your country. When she
died, two big letters were seen on her
back.'" The legend, it will be seen, is
very precise, and it is diffused throughout
the country.

On the other hand, the Baronne Bod6 in
her Memoirs gives some curious details
about the Countess Gachet, n^e Valois,
Countess de La Motte, who was settled in
the Crimea from 1820 to 1830. * I see her

LEGENDS 283

still,' she says, 'oldish, slight in figure, but
well made, dressed in a grey cloth overall.
Her white hair was covered with a black
velvet cap. She spoke a choice French,
with animation and grace. . . . She had
known Cagliostro, had an inexhaustible
fund of stories of the court of Louis xvi.,
and gave me to understand that there was
a great mystery in her life. '

In her will the Countess Cachet appointed
the father of Baronne Bode her executor.
Her Armenian servant related that the
countess, feeling ill, had spent the whole
night in sorting and burning papers. She
had forbidden her body to be touched, and
ordered that she should be buried just as
she was. In laying out the corpse, the
old servant noticed on her back two marks,
evidently made by red-hot iron.

Louis de Soudak paused in emotion before
the stone placed over the lady's tomb.
'Accompanied by an Armenian deacon,'

284 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

he writes, * I spent several hours in wander-
ing about the cemetery, covered with oats
and nettles. I found many very old tomb-
stones buried under dead bodies interred
above them. The inscriptions had dis-
appeared. The frequent rains and the
sea-winds blowing from Theodosia had
effaced everything. Thence I repaired to
the spot where the cottage of the countess
stood. On the face of a charming ravine, the
little peasant's dwelling nestled coquettishly,
smiling in its bed of verdure. Near by,
behind the trees, a windmill spread its great
vertebrated sails towards the blue sky.
Flocks of geese screeched a hostile recep-
tion, while the owner, a sturdy Bulgarian,
seemed hardly to relish the inquisitive
glance I threw over his little domain.
Returning by the silent ravine, at the
bottom of which a brook flows, watering
the flourishing kitchen garden, I reflected
that the hapless exile must often have

LEGENDS 285

wandered in that spot, and that, far from
France, her poor heart must then have
suffered bitter rancour and poignant re-
gret.'

Who could the mysterious stranger have
been ? The field of conjecture is bound-
less. Doubtless she was some unfortunate
creature who had escaped from a house
of detention during the troubles of the
Revolution, and had found the opportunity
to set off the depths of her degradation by
means of a legend.

After dying in London in 1791, and then
in the Crimea in 1825, Madame de La Motte
died once more in Paris in 1844. Nearly
all the journals made themselves echoes of
this sensational end. On returning from
the emigration, a bishop had introduced to
society, at the house of one of the wealthiest
nobles of the district, a mysterious lady.
The marquis gave her a wing of his

286 CAGLIOSTRO AND COMPANY

mansion, and devoted two domestics to her
service. He granted her a pension. Before
his death, he recommended his heir to con-
tinue these favours. The unknown lady
never went out except to go to church and
to visit the poor. She was infinitely kind-
hearted, and the poor used to kiss her
hands. But she was brought, by the very
people she succoured, into relations with
the noblest ladies of the Faubourg Saint-
Germain. She was compelled to throw
open her drawing-room. She was a won-
derful talker, relating anecdotes with all
the grace of the olden time ; and she
played at whist and reversi. It was a
favour much sought after to be admitted to
her circle — to be received by the Countess
Jeanne, the only name she bore. For
thirty years she went on giving alms, talk-
ing, and playing reversi. Then death rent
the veil. In the dead lady's room they
found a heap of half-burnt papers. Death

LEGENDS 287

had surprised her throwing the secret of
her Hfe to the flames. Amazing discovery !
the Countess Jeanne, the holy and revered
saint, was Madame de La Motte ! At any
rate, so declared all the newspapers of Paris
in the month of May 1844.

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